Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul announced his office has won the first civil hate crime lawsuit filed by his office.
According to a press release, a Carroll County Circuit Court judge ordered two former Carroll County residents, who are white, to pay more than $90,000 for what Raoul's office characterizes as a "monthslong campaign of intimidation" against their neighbor, who is a Black man.
Carroll County Circuit Court Judge Jerry Kane found Chad Hampton, 49, of Victoria, Illinois and his mother, Cheryl Hampton, 70, of Streator, Illinois, violated the Illinois Hate Crime Act by engaging in intimidation and disorderly conduct toward their neighbor, Gregory Johnson. At the time of the events mentioned in the complaint, they resided next to Johnson.
The release says Judge Kane ordered Chad and Cheryl Hampton to each pay a $5,000 civil penalty, as well as actual and punitive damages of $45,000 each to Johnson.
The lawsuit was filed in 2022. According to Raoul’s lawsuit, Chad and Cheryl Hampton engaged in months of racist behavior aimed at intimidating Johnson, including displaying a racial slur in front of a Confederate flag in a window directly facing the victim’s home. Chad Hampton also had previously displayed swastikas in direct view of Johnson’s home. Raoul alleged in his lawsuit that the Hamptons used a noose to lynch a bound and chained effigy of a Black man made to resemble Johnson from a tree directly in view of Johnson’s home.
Prior to the appearance of the lynched effigy in October 2020, the complaint says Johnson had repeatedly contacted the local police department in Savanna, Illinois, about the Hamptons’ aggressive conduct toward him.
According to the lawsuit, when Savanna police visited the Hamptons’ residence about the effigy, Cheryl Hampton openly admitted that the display targeted Johnson. The lawsuit says when a responding police officer asked Cheryl Hampton why she hung the figure, she responded that she was tired of Johnson complaining about everything she and her son did.
Cheryl Hampton refused to move the lynched effigy out of view of Johnson’s home, or to change its appearance.
The police arrested Cheryl Hampton for intimidation of a witness, which is a felony. The police took custody of the effigy as evidence.
Attorney General Raoul filed the lawsuit following a hate crimes investigation by his office’s Civil Rights Bureau with assistance by the Carroll County State’s Attorney’s Office, the city of Savanna and the Savanna Police Department. A press release says this case marks the first time Raoul has utilized expanded authority granted to his office under a 2018 amendment to the Illinois Hate Crimes Act, which allows for the Attorney General’s office to file civil lawsuits against perpetrators of hate crimes.