While controversial, the verdict Oct. 29 in the trial of Sean Grayson after Sonya Massey’s death marked one of the few times in recent history that an American police officer became a convicted murderer in connection with an on-duty fatal shooting.
“Juries are very reluctant to second-guess the split-second, often life-or-death decisions of on-duty police officers in potentially violent street encounters and in other calls for service,” said Philip Stinson, a lawyer, former police officer and professor in the criminal justice program at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
“So it’s not uncommon that you end up with a hung jury or an acquittal,” he told Illinois Times.
Of the 211 nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers charged nationwide in fatal shootings since the beginning of 2005, Stinson and other experts at Bowling Green State’s Police Integrity Research Group wrote that 171 cases have been concluded, and 73 of those cases, or 43%, ended in conviction.
Of those convicted, only 11 officers, or 15%, have been convicted of murder, including second-degree murder and the various other ways states have created to classify murder. The 11 cases include Grayson’s conviction.
State laws vary in how the rest of the convictions are labeled. But as of Nov. 6, 21 officers were found guilty of manslaughter, nine were convicted of voluntary manslaughter, and seven were convicted of involuntary manslaughter, according to Stinson’s research.
Convictions for the rest included official misconduct, reckless homicide, reckless endangerment, negligent homicide, federal criminal deprivation of civil rights, aggravated assault, assault with a firearm and reckless discharge of a firearm.
Massey’s father, James Wilburn, called the conviction of his daughter’s killer for second-degree murder instead of first-degree murder “a miscarriage of justice.”
The Peoria County jury’s decision to find Grayson guilty of a lesser offense in the Sangamon County case was a bitter disappointment for Wilburn and other members and supporters of the Massey family. Grayson could face decades less time in prison as a result.
Grayson, 31, a white former Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy, shot and killed Massey, a 36-year-old Black single mother of two teenagers inside her Woodside Township home on July 6, 2024, while responding to Massey’s 911 call in a case that has received national media attention.
Stinson said the jury’s Oct. 29 decision on Grayson’s fate, after about 12 hours of deliberations, was outside the norm when police in the U.S. are arrested for murder or manslaughter resulting from an on-duty fatal shooting. However, he said it’s not surprising that the jury opted to find him guilty of a lesser charge.
“It’s certainly not uncommon that the charge that the officer is convicted of is a lesser charge than the most serious charge they were facing,” Stinson, who holds a doctorate degree in criminology, said.
The “lesser charge” tends to be a crime other than murder, he said. But in Grayson’s case, Stinson said, “Second-degree murder is still a very serious offense, so it’s not much of a lesser offense.”
However, what is considered second-degree murder in Illinois in 2025 is similar to what was called “voluntary manslaughter” before the law was changed in the late 1980s.
Bill Roberts, who served as Sangamon County state’s attorney in the 1980s and later served as U.S. attorney for the Central District of Illinois, said the Grayson jury’s decision not to find Grayson guilty of the more serious charge didn’t surprise him based on his experience with central Illinois juries in murder cases.
“You’re going to see people who tend to respect law enforcement and want to believe them,” Roberts said. “Now, they can be talked out of that. The facts can erase that feeling.”
The differing ways of interpreting the jury’s verdict come after a trial in which jurors were asked to view Grayson’s actions from vastly different perspectives.
His attorneys, whose fees will be covered in full by the national legal insurance group plan he joined when he became a member of Sangamon County Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 55, were unsuccessful in securing an acquittal for Grayson, who originally was charged with first-degree murder after Massey’s death.
But attorneys Dan Fultz and Mark Wykoff were able to persuade all 12 jurors – nine women and three men, including the one Black man on the otherwise all-white jury – that Grayson truly believed he was justified in killing Massey as an act of self-defense, even though jurors ruled that Grayson’s belief was unreasonable. Grayson’s mistaken belief fit one of the options for a second-degree murder conviction in Illinois.
The early morning incident in Massey’s home ended with Grayson shooting at the unarmed woman three times, with one bullet striking her below the left eye and severing her left carotid artery.
Antonio Romanucci, far right, one of the lawyers representing the Massey family, takes questions from the media at an Oct. 29 press conference after the verdict in the trial of Sean Grayson was announced. PHOTO BY STEVE HINRICHS
Self-defense argument
Grayson contended he was acting in self-defense after Massey, who was dealing with mental-health issues, picked up a pot of water that had been boiling on her stove and eventually raised the pot above her head and tried to throw the water at him. Massey was 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighed 112 pounds; Grayson stands 6 feet 3 inches tall and at the time weighed about 230 pounds.
The self-defense argument may have been boosted by the Riverton resident and North Mac High School graduate’s decision to testify in his own defense.
Details of what was discussed in the jurors’ private deliberations weren’t available, but the concept of self-defense apparently was key to why the jury was able to find Grayson guilty of second-degree murder.
Police body-worn camera video of the early morning incident appeared pivotal for Sangamon County State’s Attorney John Milhiser and First Assistant State’s Attorney Mary Beth Rodgers to get a murder conviction.
They told jurors the evidence didn’t support Grayson’s claim of self-defense.
Fultz said in opening statements, “What happened to Miss Massey was a tragedy, but it was not a crime.”
But Milhiser told jurors Grayson shot and killed Massey “without lawful justification because he was mad at her.”
Rodgers said Grayson lied several times on the stand and knew Massey “wasn’t dangerous. … He knew how to slow things down, but he didn’t.” The shooting happened, Rodgers said, “not because Sonya was in crisis, but because he snapped. … He could have left the house. He’d like you to believe he was scared.”
Stinson and his colleagues at Bowling Green State’s Police Integrity Research Group included the Grayson conviction in the Nov. 6 update of their ongoing study of police officers charged since 2005.
Murder convictions for cops uncommon
Stinson said it’s unknown whether jurors showed any deference to Grayson because of his status as a police officer.
Now that the trial is over, the jurors are free to speak to the news media or anyone else about their deliberations. No one has spoken so far, and Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge Ryan Cadagin, who presided during the trial, has used his judicial authority to keep the jurors’ names secret.
“I don’t think we can assume that they compromised and came up with a lesser offense just because some of the jurors think police officers have a difficult job,” Stinson said. “I don’t think we know. They don’t let you and me in the jury deliberation room.”
Even though Stinson said it was “highly appropriate” that Grayson was charged and convicted, most police officers involved in the 900 to 1,300 fatal on-duty shootings each year across the country never face charges.
“We have to assume that the reason for that is because the investigations determined that they were legally justified, that they had a reasonable apprehension of an imminent threat of deadly force or death or serious injury being imposed against themselves or someone else,” Stinson said.
Reluctance of juries to “second-guess” police who are charged extends to others in the criminal-justice system, including people who sit on grand juries, he said.
“Some prosecutors have actually reached out to me and anecdotally told me how frustrated they were that they’ve had trouble getting indictments returned from grand juries in these types of cases,” Stinson said.
“Not only that, judges who sit in bench trials and are used to hearing horrible things all day long – where the judge is the trier of fact – they, too, are unlikely to convict an officer in these cases.”
“And frankly,” Stinson added, “up until about 12 years ago, we don’t think that investigators and prosecutors closely scrutinized these cases. There was just an overriding assumption that the officer was legally justified, and only in the most egregious and bizarre cases did they deviate from that.”
Stinson attributed that “tipping point” to several high-profile cases involving people, many of them Black, who were killed by police in incidents that couldn’t be “rationally explained” and involved “bizarre” sets of facts. Included in those incidents, he said, were the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in 2014 in New York City, both in 2014; John Geer in 2013 in Virginia; and Freddie Gray in 2015 in Baltimore.
Stinson said Massey’s death was one such case, “where the woman was standing in her kitchen and ended up getting shot and killed by an officer.”
Massey’s death did fit one pattern tracked by Stinson’s Police Integrity Research Group.
“I think that every Black female who’s been shot and killed by a police officer that’s in my database has been shot at their own home,” Stinson said. “There’s a lot of things that could be going on there. Black women run the family, and they’re at home. But it’s really bizarre and horrific that these women are not safe in their own homes.”
Second-degree murder details
Members of the Massey family and their supporters said their frustration with the verdict stemmed from the four to 20 years in prison Grayson could be ordered to serve when he is sentenced Jan. 29 by Cadagin.
With credit for time served and good behavior, Grayson, who is being held at the Sangamon County Jail, could end up serving, at most, fewer than 10 years in prison.
A second-degree murder conviction also would allow Cadagin to sentence Grayson to probation and no prison time.
By comparison, a first-degree murder conviction in this case would have carried a mandatory prison sentence of 45 years to life without the possibility of probation. First-degree murder carries a prison term of 20 to 60 years, with additional time for Grayson possible because of his use of a gun in the murder.
“Second-degree murder – that is not right!” Springfield Black activist and Massey family friend Teresa Haley said at a news conference as she stood with the Masseys and Wilburns after the verdict. “That is not justice for anyone’s family, regardless of who you are and where you come from.”
She and relatives of Sonya Massey vowed to work to change state law and create an option for a higher sentence for murderers such as Grayson, citing the “major difference” in penalties between first- and second-degree murder.
The Bowling Green State University database of police officers convicted of murder showed that the prison sentences they received ranged from 6½ years to life, with an average sentence of 15 years. The statistics didn’t indicate whether laws in the various states allowed the officers to get any time off for good behavior.
For the officers convicted of lesser offenses, the database indicated they received sentences ranging from no prison time to 40 years, with an average sentence of 4½ years.
The General Assembly created second-degree murder as a criminal charge in 1987. Before that, the options for charging someone in a homicide were murder, voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter, according to Glen Carbon lawyer John Rekowski.
He said the second-degree murder statute was created to resolve a legislative debate at that time involving evidence and other legal issues, and not because of concerns about the differing lengths of potential prison sentences.
The legislature did away with voluntary manslaughter when it approved second-degree murder as a new charge, Rekowski said, but the gap in potential prison sentences between first- and second-degree murder is about the same as the gap that used to exist between murder and voluntary manslaughter.
Rekowski, the Illinois State Bar Association’s legislative liaison on criminal justice issues, said he would oppose an effort to make punishments for second-degree murder tougher, because defendants convicted of the offense in less clear-cut situations than Grayson’s would be unfairly denied leniency by courts.
Grayson may deserve prison time, but others convicted of the same crime might not, said Rekowski, who served as chief public defender in Madison County for 35 years.
When Grayson’s lawyers proposed that the jury be given the option of finding Grayson guilty of second-degree murder instead of first-degree, prosecutors didn’t disagree with the option being read as part of jury instructions.
Milhiser has declined comment on his tactics during the trial. But Rekowski said well-established legal precedents make clear that “any evidence” of a mitigating factor such as a belief of acting in self-defense would justify telling the jury about the option of a second-degree murder finding.
It would be pointless for prosecutors to oppose or the judge to deny the defense’s request in a case such as this, Rekowski said. That’s because a first-degree murder conviction given by a jury that wasn’t informed about the second-degree murder option would likely be overturned on appeal by a higher court, he said.
Sontae Massey, a cousin of Sonya Massey who has been a part of the Massey Commission and active in calling for reforms, addresses the crowd Oct. 20, outside the Peoria County Courthouse. PHOTO BY ZACH ADAMS
It’s unknown whether Grayson plans to appeal the verdict. His lawyers have declined comment.
Lack of Black jurors
Some critics of the verdict attributed the second-degree conviction to the fact that there weren’t more Black people on the jury. About 8% of Grayson’s jury was Black, while Black people make up 15% of Peoria County’s population and almost 13% in Sangamon County.
Across the country, Black people tend to be underrepresented on juries, often because of racial bias in the ways that rolls of potential jurors are compiled and the ways jurors are selected, according to the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit legal advocacy group based in Montgomery, Alabama.
The group says Blacks are more likely than whites to be removed as potential jurors during the selection process as lawyers for both sides use a certain number of what are known as “peremptory” strikes to remove people as candidates without having to cite a specific reason.
For Grayson’s jury, 49 potential jurors were interviewed by the judge, prosecutors and defense attorneys. Other than the Black man who was selected to serve, eight other Black people, all women, were interviewed.
One of the women, who was single and had no children, said in court that she worked in retail and was concerned about the financial burden she would face by missing work if she were selected.
Another woman, who was a single mother, had a master’s degree in social work and worked as a foster care supervisor. She said she wouldn’t be able to put aside views of the case she developed from information in the news media. She didn’t say what those views were.
Still another woman, who had a bachelor’s degree, worked in the insurance industry and was married with a grown son, said she formed an initial opinion on the case after viewing police bodycam video of Massey’s killing but could be unbiased if she were selected.
Sean Grayson was found guilty of second-degree murder for the July 2024 death of Sonya Massey, making him just one of 11 non-federal law-enforcement officers in the U.S. convicted of a murder for an on-duty fatal shooting since 2005, according to a national database.
Grayson’s testimony
The Sean Grayson who took the stand Oct. 27 in his own defense was a kinder, gentler person than the one depicted on police-worn camera video.
This one was calm, didn’t use profanity and methodically answered questions from one of his attorneys about key parts of his interactions with Massey.
There wasn’t any big confrontation between Grayson and Milhiser when the prosecutor had his first and only chance to contradict Grayson’s account on cross-examination.
At the time of the shooting, Grayson had a beard and mustache and was at least 20 to 30 pounds heavier when he knocked loudly on Massey’s door around 1 a.m. July 6, 2024. Grayson was being treated for colon cancer, and his treatment continues, according to court records and testimony.
Grayson and another deputy, Dawson Farley, never found the prowler that Massey thought she heard. Her two children weren’t in the home. The investigation into her death revealed she was dealing with mental illness, and that her sometimes vague and halting answers to basic questions could have been related to paranoia and schizophrenia, though Grayson didn’t know that at the time. Grayson testified he initially thought Massey was intoxicated.
Grayson wasn’t wearing glasses in Massey’s home, as he did in the courtroom. On the stand, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and a tie, Grayson testified about a new detail that he hadn’t revealed before.
He said that in the final seconds before the shooting, he approached Massey after she had obeyed his initial command to put down a pot of hot water and ducked behind a counter in her home so he could put her in handcuffs and arrest her for threatening him.
Grayson never before mentioned his intention to use handcuffs, which, in the end, he never had a chance to use, or his intention to arrest Massey.
Rodgers, one of the prosecutors, said later in the trial that there was no evidence to justify such an arrest.
Grayson said he approached Massey to apply the handcuffs rather than stand his ground or step back. Experts testifying for the prosecution said approaching Massey was an unsound tactic that escalated the situation.
Grayson testified that he also approached Massey, with his gun pointed at her, when she knelt to the ground behind a counter to make sure she didn’t retrieve a gun or other weapon from the ground. No gun was ever found.
Grayson said Massey then jumped up, grabbed the pot of water she had originally removed from the stove, and held the pot of water over her head. Grayson said he then fired the shots at Massey to avoid being scalded.
Massey initially carried the pot to her sink with oven mitts after the two deputies asked her to turn off the burner under the pot on her stove to avoid starting a fire.
On Farley’s bodycam footage, Grayson’s demeanor seemed to change from calm to upset after Massey said twice, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.” She said that twice when Grayson told her he backed away to avoid her “hot, steaming water.”
The situation escalated seconds after that and culminated with Grayson shooting at Massey.
Grayson wrote in his report on the incident that he interpreted Massey’s “rebuke” statement as meaning “she was going to kill me.”
The dictionary definition of “rebuke” means to express strong disapproval or criticism of someone because of his or her behavior.
At the time Grayson was hired by the sheriff’s department in 2023, the department required him to go through a psychological examination. Such an exam was required for new hires.
The results of Grayson’s exam said he “scored low on the cognitive assessment.” The supervising psychologist, Thomas Campion of Campion, Barrow & Associates, wrote of Grayson, “It will take him longer to learn, process and apply new material when compared to others.”
Farley wrote in a July 9, 2024, report on the incident that he, too, feared injury from the hot water in the pot and drew his weapon right after Grayson did because of that fear.
Several weeks later, however, Farley contacted Illinois State Police, and he testified that he did so to “clarify” details of his account. He told ISP officials that, in reality, he didn’t fear Massey and instead feared the way Grayson was acting toward Massey in the minutes before the shooting.
Farley testified that he was going through trauma after the shooting that prevented him from clearly recalling what happened even after watching bodycam video multiple times.
On cross examination, Fultz suggested that Farley, a new deputy to the department in July 2024, changed his story to avoid punishment on the job or being denied a permanent job after he completed probation. Farley denied Fultz’ suggestions.
In closing arguments, Fultz pointed to a few frames from bodycam footage that captured fractions of a second in which Massey appeared to try to throw some of the hot water toward Grayson with Grayson pointing his gun at her.
“As hard as it is to hear,” Fultz said, “the outcome of this case was driven by Sonya Massey’s actions.”
But Milhiser, in his closing argument, said Massey probably was scared of Grayson and picked up the pot to save her life while “staring down the barrel of his gun.”
“These were the actions of a bully,” Milhiser said of Grayson’s conduct. Rodgers added, “Just because he’s wearing a uniform doesn’t mean he gets to use deadly force.”
This article appears in November 20-26, 2025.
