PEORIA — In a crowded but airy courtroom 75 miles from where a downstate sheriff’s deputy shot and killed Sonya Massey near Springfield in a case that stirred national outrage, a prosecutor said Wednesday the deputy shot Massey after he got mad at her while she held a pot of boiling water, while the deputy’s attorney told a jury the fatal shooting was in self-defense.
A 12-person jury listened intently to opening arguments from Sangamon County State’s Attorney John Milhiser and attorney Daniel Fultz, who is one of the lawyers representing now-former Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson in the first-degree murder trial. The jury is composed of nine women and three men, and only one of the male jurors is Black.
“At the end of the day, this defendant went into the home of Sonya Mas