Florida Senate advances $4M compensation for Groveland Four families

Families of the 'Groveland Four' overcome with emotion after convictions dismissed

A Lake County judge approved the state?s motion to dismiss the convictions of the Groveland Four. They are now officially innocent men in the eyes of the law over 72 years after they were wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit.

ORLANDO, Fla. - A proposal to compensate the families of the Groveland Four is advancing in the Florida Senate, decades after the men were wrongly accused in one of the state’s most infamous racial injustice cases. 

The measure now heads to the Senate floor as the House has yet to take up its version.

What we know:

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday approved SB 694, adding $4 million to compensate the families of Ernest Thomas, Samuel Shepherd, Charles Greenlee and Walter Irvin.

The four Black men were accused in 1949 of raping a white woman in Lake County. The case became one of the most notorious episodes of Florida’s Jim Crow era. In 2019, they were posthumously pardoned by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet.

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Under the proposal, the $4 million would be divided equally among the four families, according to the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis, an Ocoee Democrat.

The House version, HB 6523, does not include a dollar amount and has not yet been heard in committee.

The backstory:

Ernest Thomas was killed by a posse in Madison County after the accusation surfaced. The other three men were beaten to coerce confessions and later convicted by an all-white jury.

Charles Greenlee, who was 16 at the time, received a life sentence. Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin, both U.S. Army veterans, were sentenced to death. After the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a new trial because of prejudicial publicity, Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall shot the handcuffed men while transporting them, claiming they tried to escape. Shepherd was killed, and Irvin survived but was retried and convicted.

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Then-Gov. Leroy Collins later commuted Irvin’s death sentence to life in prison. Irvin was paroled in 1968 and died in 1969. Greenlee was released in the early 1960s and died in 2012.

The case gained renewed national attention after the 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning book Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King chronicled the events.

In 2021, Lake County Circuit Judge Heidi Davis vacated the convictions of Greenlee and Irvin and dismissed the indictments against Thomas and Shepherd, restoring the men to the presumption of innocence.

What they're saying:

"This bill is about justice, not merely remembered as history, but carried forward as responsibility," Bracy Davis told lawmakers Thursday.

In contrast, the woman whose accusation sparked the case, Norma Padgett Upshaw, maintained for decades that the men were guilty. Speaking to DeSantis and the Cabinet in 2019, she said, "I’m begging you not to give them pardons because they done it." Upshaw died in 2024.

Timeline:

The Senate proposal now heads to the full chamber for consideration. The House has yet to schedule a hearing on its version, leaving uncertainty about whether compensation will pass both chambers this session.