Sangamon County government will be spared from a lawsuit and a potentially embarrassing trial under a $10 million settlement with the family of Sonya Massey.
The settlement, the largest of its kind in Sangamon County history, was reached last week, County Board member Craig Hall told Illinois Times on Feb. 6.
As part of the settlement, Sonya Massey’s family would agree not to sue county government in connection with the July 6 fatal shooting of Massey in her Woodside Township home by former Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson.
A resolution sponsored by Board Chairperson Andy Van Meter that was approved at the County Board meeting Feb. 11 says the settlement is “in the best interests of Sangamon County.”
Civil
rights attorney Ben Crump, one of several lawyers representing the Massey
family, said the settlement is “only the first step in getting justice for
Sonya Massey.”
The
Massey family, he said, wants to see Grayson convicted of murder and supports legislation
recently introduced in the Illinois General Assembly to require a more robust
vetting process before police officers are hired.
Kevin
O’Connor, another Massey family attorney, called the settlement amount “a
significant number.”
Van Meter, a Springfield Republican who leads the 29-member, GOP-controlled board, declined an interview request. But he wrote in a Feb. 7 memo to County Board members, “The settlement amount, while significant, takes into account county finances and the use of public dollars and acknowledges what county taxpayers can realistically afford.”
Van Meter, who released the memo to the news media, added in his message, “No price paid can take back the actions of a rogue former deputy, but this agreement is an effort to provide some measure of recompense to the Massey family for their unimaginable loss. The county remains committed to working with the community to strengthen policies to try to ensure tragedies like this never happen again.”
Hall, a rural Loami farmer and a Republican who chairs the board’s Civil Liberties Committee, said the proposal has the unanimous support of the committee’s members. He said he agreed with the county’s legal representatives who viewed a settlement as a better option for the county than the prospect of an expensive trial with an uncertain result.
The killing of Massey, a 36-year-old single Black mother of two children and someone who struggled with mental illness, thrust the county into the national spotlight as her death became part of the national Black Lives Matter movement and intensified racial tension in the Springfield area.
Grayson, 30, a white deputy who was hired by the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Department in 2023, was charged with first-degree murder in Massey’s death. He has pleaded not guilty.
Grayson was fired by the county after the incident. He has been denied pretrial release and is being held in the Macon County Jail in Decatur.
But an Illinois Appellate Court panel in November ordered Circuit Court Judge Ryan Cadagin to release Grayson based on an appeal filed by Grayson’s attorneys, Dan Fultz and Mark Wykoff.
Grayson’s lawyers cited provisions of the 2021 law abolishing cash bail in Illinois and argued that State’s Attorney John Milhiser didn’t present enough evidence to justify keeping Grayson in jail.
The Illinois Supreme Court put the release of Grayson on hold while it considers an appeal of the Appellate Court ruling.
Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump has represented the Massey family and has made numerous trips to Springfield to call for justice. The body-worn camera video showing Grayson’s confrontation with Massey after she called 911 to summon police when she suspected a prowler in her neighborhood went viral and shocked people around the world.
When asked to comment on the proposed settlement, Hall said he had feared the amount would be even higher. He said the settlement, if approved, would require the county to either borrow more money through the issuance of bonds, or restructure the county’s debts, to afford the settlement.
That’s because there’s only about $1.5 million left in a county fund for paying legal settlements, judgments and other legal costs for defending against lawsuits, Hall said.
But County Administrator Brian McFadden, who works for the County Board, said in a statement, “Despite what some have said, there are no plans to issue debt, raise taxes or cut programs to pay for the settlement.”
McFadden said the settlement would be paid from “reserves and contingency lines within various funds of county government. County funds have a record of being managed responsibly year to year, and one of the benefits of that is that we are able to establish and maintain reserves to cover situations such as this – a large, one-time expense outside the normal operations of county government.
“We anticipate for such instances, and we plan accordingly,” McFadden said.
The proposed settlement appears to be in the range of other such payouts in the wake of police-involved deaths of other Black people around the country.
The May 2020 suffocation death of George Floyd, 46, whose neck was pinned by the knee of a white, former Minneapolis police officer, for almost nine minutes, resulted in a $27 million settlement for Floyd’s family from the city of Minneapolis. It was reportedly the largest pretrial civil rights settlement in U.S. history.
But other settlements between local governments and families of deceased individuals were lower, including $12 million from the city of Louisville, Kentucky, after the March 2020 shooting death of Breonna Taylor, 26, in a botched drug raid; $6 million after the 2014 shooting death of Tamir Rice, 12, at the hands of a Cleveland, Ohio, police officer; $6 million after the 2014 chokehold-related death of Eric Garner, 43, at the hands of a New York City police officer; $5 million after the 2014 shooting death of LaQuan McDonald, 17, involving a Chicago police officer; $6.4 million after the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, 25, during an arrest in Baltimore; and $1.5 million after the shooting death of Michael Brown, 18, at the hands of a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
The settlement for Massey’s family would be almost four times more than Sangamon County’s $2.6 million settlement in 2014 with the widow of Amon Paul Carlock.
Carlock, 57, was a county jail inmate who died after a struggle with correctional officers in 2007. Including the settlement amount, the county’s total legal costs associated with a lawsuit filed by Mary Andreatta-Carlock were almost $5.3 million.
Some activists calling for more accountability and transparency from Sangamon County government have said more details might have been revealed about Grayson’s hiring if the Massey family had filed a lawsuit and the case went to trial.
A Jan. 16 agreement between the county and the U.S. Department of Justice ended the DOJ’s race and disability discrimination probe of the county, which was sparked by Sonya Massey’s death. But the agreement didn’t say whether any mistakes were made in Grayson’s hiring.
County officials denied a Freedom of Information Act request from Illinois Times seeking a copy of the documents that officials turned over to the DOJ in response to demands by the federal agency.
The sheriff’s department’s FOIA denial letter said it would be “unduly burdensome for this office to go through years’ worth of documents/information and do the redaction process.”
Van Meter’s memo said the settlement is “part of Sangamon County’s ongoing efforts” to improve in the wake of Massey’s death.
In addition to the settlement, Van Meter said the county is “focused on improving its policies and practices” through its “memorandum of agreement” with the DOJ.
“That agreement establishes measures to refine crisis response, enhance training and build community trust,” Van Meter wrote. “The county will continue to work to ensure that its law enforcement and emergency response systems operate efficiently, with necessary safeguards in place to prevent future tragedies.”
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Hall, the County Board member, added, “We’re still going to address these problems.”
He pointed to the ongoing work of the citizen-led Massey Commission. “We’re still leaning on the Massey Commission to give us some direction, and we’re going to listen to them,” he said.
However, Republicans on the County Board used their votes to turn down a proposal to put a binding referendum on the April 1 ballot that could have established voter recall for future sheriffs. Such a referendum was supported by the Massey Commission.
The effort to put a referendum on the ballot was sparked by the refusal of former sheriff Jack Campbell, a Republican, to resign after news media reports of numerous “red flags” during Grayson’s tenure with other police agencies and during Grayson’s service in the U.S. Army. Those problems preceded Campbell’s hiring of Grayson.
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The County Board has indicated preliminary support for a future referendum that would create a countywide Mental Health Board, another Massey Commission priority. The proposed board would collect property taxes to fund improvements in mental health services.
County Board member Anthony “Tony” DelGiorno, a Springfield Democrat, said, “I certainly believe that the Massey family is entitled to every cent of this settlement for the failings of the sheriff’s department that resulted in Sonya’s senseless murder.
“I was fully prepared for the county to pay more,” DelGiorno said. “However, I understand and empathize with the family if they want to be able to move on in some way. I hope that this does not short-circuit the work of the Massey Commission to make the systemic changes that are necessary at the sheriff’s department.”
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When asked whether the proposed settlement amount is fair for the Massey family, Hall said, “I don’t know how you put a value on a human life.”
He said Massey’s killing was a “horrible thing. … The scars of this will never heal.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated throughout since Illinois Times first published it online.
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This article appears in The Wedding Issue 2025.
I wish it would go to a trial so that these awful cops and this county feel every bit of public shame.