Sean Grayson will stay in prison after board rejects medical release request

The Illinois Prisoner Review Board on Friday denied a bid for medical release from Sean Grayson, the former Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy convicted of second-degree murder in the 2024 killing of Sonya Massey. 

The decision means Grayson, who is roughly six months into a 20-year prison sentence, will remain behind bars. 

Attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, who represent Massey’s family, praised the ruling. 

“The Prisoner Review Board made the right decision and reaffirmed the jury’s verdict and the sentence the court imposed,” the attorneys said in a joint statement, adding that “a badge does not provide an early way out.” 

Grayson filed for release in May under the Joe Coleman Act, citing symptoms of advanced colon cancer. As reported ahead of Friday’s hearing, in his handwritten application, Grayson showed no remorse in describing the shooting and maintained that Massey had attacked him with a pot of boiling water, and he did not check a box stating his condition was likely to be fatal within 18 months. 

A medical professional who examined him for the state, by contrast, did check that box, finding Grayson likely to die within 18 months. 

Even so, the final call on release rested with a three-person Prisoner Review Board panel, which met in Springfield on Friday morning. 

Sangamon County State’s Attorney John Milhiser had urged the board to keep Grayson in custody. In a letter opposing release, Milhiser wrote that Grayson already had cancer when he committed the murder and that the illness was explicitly weighed at sentencing, calling release “a miscarriage of justice and an insult to Sonya Massey’s memory and family.” 

Massey’s family had also spoken out against letting Grayson go. Her cousin, Sontae Massey, told Capitol News Illinois last month that Grayson “has to pay for what he did.” 

Capitol News Illinois contributed reporting to this story.