37 SHARES Share Tweet

Janaury 14, 2014 Gregory Hill Jr. a 30-year-old Black man was fatally shot by a sheriff deputy in St. Lucie County, Florida. The deputy was responding to a noise complaint about music coming from Hill’s garage.

Now four years later, a federal jury has determined that Hill was largely responsible for his own death, awarding the man’s family just $4 in a wrongful death lawsuit.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Hill’s fiance, Monique Davis, told the New York Times. “There are a lot of questions I want to ask.”

The heartbreaking decision comes after a two-year legal battle for the family. Officers claimed that Hill was armed at the time of the shooting: his gun was recovered from the scene but it was found unloaded in Hill’s back pocket. In 2016, Hill’s mother, Viola Bryant, filed a lawsuit arguing that the deputy had violated Hill’s constitutional rights. The New York Times states that the case also asked the jury to determine if the family was owed damages and, if so, what amount they should receive.

SEE ALSO: Dezmond Bethea was shot 17 times by cops

The jury the determined that $4 – $1 to Hill’s mother for funeral expenses and $1 for each of Hill’s three children would be enough. The decision came after hours of jury deliberations, and the amount was so small because the jury ruled that Hill, who was intoxicated at the time of the shooting, was mostly responsible for his death.

While the jury ruled that the deputy who shot Hill did not use excessive force, it did find that the county sheriff had been “slightly negligent.” Regardless the jury found the sheriff responsible for only 1 percent of the incident, the department will only be required to pay 1 percent of the settlement, which comes out to 4 cents.

A judge is expected to void that fee, according to the family’s lawyer.

In many ways, Hill’s case is not surprising officers are rarely prosecuted for police shootings, at least partly because they’re given wide latitude to use deadly force. However, this case comes at a time where there is national attention focused to racial disparities in the U.S especially when it comes to police use of force.

The verdict has outraged Hill’s family. “Why go there with the $1? That was the hurtful part,”John Phillips, the family’s lawyer, said of the jury. On May 29, Phillips set up a GoFundMe in the hopes of raising money for Hill’s children and to cover repairs for home damages caused by the SWAT team.

“That a black child’s pain is only worth a dollar is exactly the problem with the plight of the African-American right now. This says, black lives don’t matter,” Phillips told CNN.

But local officers have praised the decision. “We are pleased to see this difficult and tragic incident come to a conclusion,” St. Lucie Sheriff Ken Mascara wrote in a May 24 Facebook post.

“We appreciate the jury’s time and understanding and wish everyone involved in this case the best as they move forward,” the post concluded.

Hill’s family plans to appeal the jury’s decision. “I’m going to keep fighting until I get some justice,” Davis, Hill’s fiancée, told the Times. “That’s the only way I’m going to get peace.”

Copyright ©2018 The Black Detour All Rights Reserved.