Teresa Haley said she personally supported passage of the SAFE-T Act in Illinois, especially because it allowed for no-cash bail for offenders at the discretion of judges.
A recent Fourth District Appellate Court unanimous opinion that would have allowed for the pre-trial release of Sean P. Grayson, a former Sangamon County Sheriff’s deputy charged with first-degree murder of Sonya Massey, changed Haley’s tune somewhat.
“(With the Grayson ruling, the SAFE-T) Act has been taken totally out of context,” Haley said a press conference and rally for Sonya Massey inside the Illinois Capitol Rotunda Thursday. Haley of Haley & Associates has worked closely with the Massey family.
“I’m asking state legislators to revisit the act and see what we can do to tweak it,” she added. “If somebody is charged with murder, they are a risk to the society.”
Haley was joined by several family members of Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot inside her home in an unincorporated neighborhood of Springfield after placing a 911 call, on July 6. Three members of the Massey Commission, formed with an eye towards addressing systemic issues in law enforcement practices, mental health responses and community relations, also spoke.
On Tuesday, the appellate court stayed its mandate until Jan. 2, allowing the Illinois Supreme Court the opportunity to determine whether it will take up the case.
Grayson’s hearing to set the conditions of his release had been scheduled for Dec. 6 before the stay.
Sangamon County State’s Attorney John Milhiser filed a Petition for Leave to Appeal (PLA) with the Supreme Court asking it take up the appellate court decision from the Nov. 27 order.
In a news release announcing the filing, Milhiser said Grayson had demonstrated that he “cannot comply with conditions and is a danger to the community.”
Mark Wykoff, an attorney for Grayson, said the State’s arguments in the PLA “at first blush, appear to be a regurgitation of the arguments that were unpersuasive in the appellate court.”
The petition, Wykoff added, appeared to be “the product of the same playbook” employed in the Earl Moore Jr. case.
The State argued that the defendants in the case, former emergency medical services workers Peggy Finley and Peter Cadigan, both charged with first-degree murder, were dangers to the community. Finley and Cadigan also were ordered released pending trial.
Thursday’s speakers took a different tact.
“My message to those three judges who ruled Sean Grayson is not a danger to the people of Springfield…If there’s a house for sale on your block, let him move on the block where you live and we’ll see how quickly that (not in my backyard) attitude comes out in you,” said James Wilburn, Sonya Massey’s father, who lives in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
“I’m going to fight to keep my daughter’s killer in a jail cell. I don’t ever want to see him walk free amongst any of us.”
Wilburn believed the appellate court ruling was “a bastardization of the SAFE-T Act.”
“I think the SAFE-T Act was enacted to keep low-level criminals, who could not afford a bond that was set, to get (out of jail),” Wilburn said. “(Grayson) has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and two other felonies.”
University of Illinois Springfield associate professor of sociology Lesa Johnson believed an old nemesis was behind the appellate court’s ruling.
“The idea that an institutionalized group of people should use the very SAFE-T Act that has been put into place to save poor people and people of color and use it to turn around and save a white supremacist murderer is not new,” Johnson said. “It is a carryover of a centuries-old institutional racism that has pervaded the criminal system, the government system, the education system, the economic system and every other system that calls itself a bastion of justice.
“This is not justice. This is the same institutional racism that has been going on in the U.S. for over 400 years. This is what we must say to the appellate court: bsolutely not. This stops here.”
Evan Brown, a member of a workgroup of the Massey Commission, said it seemed like the appellate court judges were “politicizing their own agenda. We have faith ultimately the Supreme Court will do the right thing.”
Brown challenged local, state and federal officials to make strong statements and “put the pressure on the Supreme Court to do what’s right.”
Brown and commission member Calvin Christian said they also had little hope for a U.S. Department of Justice investigation launched last month against the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Department.
The DOJ noted “serious concerns about (the sheriff department’s) interactions with Black people and people with behavioral health disabilities,” along with a host of practices and procedures.
Christian said comments by President-elect Donald Trump stating he would like to have federal immunity for police officers reinforced that thinking.
Shadia Massey, a first cousin to Sonya Massey and a co-chair of the commission, said the family continues to be devastated.
The appellate court ruling the day before Thanksgiving was one more pang.
“The day Sean Grayson is let out,” she said, “will be a hurtful, hurtful day.”
Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788; sspearie@sj-r.com; X, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.
