LaVon Bracy Davis, RaShon Young file legislation to compensate Groveland Four families

Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis and Rep. RaShon Young have filed legislation requiring the state to compensate the families of the Groveland Four — the young Black men falsely accused of rape in Lake County in 1949.

“The story of the Groveland Four is one of unimaginable injustice that echoes within Florida’s history,” Young said in a statement.

Ernest Thomas was murdered by a mob and shot 400 times. Three of the men were beaten and eventually convicted in the Jim Crow South. Walter Irvin and Samuel Shepherd were shot by Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall and Deputy Sheriff James Yates, who had been taking the handcuffed men to another state prison. Irvin survived, Shepherd was killed. Charles Greenlee served 12 years in prison until he was paroled. He died in 2012 at age 78.

The bills filed by the two Central Florida Democrats (SB 694, HB 6523) don’t specify how much the families would be paid, saying the money from the Department of State’s General Revenue funds would be specified in the General Appropriations Act.

“The truth is simple: you cannot put a price on a life, especially when the state was responsible for taking it,” Bracy Davis said.

Still, she said she hopes each family will receive at least $2 million as she pledged to work with the budget Chair.

“For nearly seventy years, the families of the Groveland Four have carried a burden that should never have been theirs to bear. Florida cannot rewrite history, but we can decide how we respond to it,” Bracy Davis said in a statement.

“This legislation is not simply a continuation of past acknowledgments; it is a deliberate commitment to correct a grave injustice. It says clearly that when the state fails its citizens, the state must also lead the way in making it right. … These families should be compensated immediately.”

Since the atrocity, the Legislature gave a formal apology in 2017. Gov. Ron DeSantis also granted posthumous pardons to all four men in 2019.

“For seventy years, these four men have had their history wrongly written for crimes they did not commit,” DeSantis said in a statement at the time.

A Lake County Judge vacated their convictions and officially exonerated them in 2021.

Norma Padgett, who had been 17 when she accused the four men of rape, died last year at age 92. She refused to publicly take back her story even though the evidence mounted that she had made up her allegations, The Washington Post reported at the time of her death.

“There are a lot of Black families that have been gaslighted,” Gilbert King, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning “Devil in the Grove” book the case, told the newspaper. “They know what the truth is. They know these stories are out there, and they never get anywhere. There’s no judicial relief.”

Bracy Davis and Young want their joint legislation to change that.

“We cannot undo the pain they endured, but we can affirm today that their lives mattered, their truth mattered, and justice delayed will not mean justice denied,” Young said.