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Van Dyke faces two counts of first degree murder, 16 aggravated battery leads and an official misconduct for killing and killing the black teenager. The white officer risks life imprisonment if he is found guilty.
The video of the shooting sparked protests, a Justice Ministry investigation into civil rights, criticism of the mayor of the city and finally the ouster of the police superintendent.
Van Dyke is the first police officer in Chicago to be charged with first degree murder since 1980.
Van Dyke appeared before the jury on Tuesday and told the jury that McDonald's face was expressionless – "his eyes were out of his eyes" – as the teenager continued to "advance" on him, holding a knife.
Standing at about 10 or 15 feet, McDonald's "turned his chest toward me," said the officer.
"He waved the knife from his lower right side up, across his body, towards my left shoulder," said the officer, seeming to be strangled when he was showed the action to the jurors.
The officer told the jury that he had then shot McDonald's.
Yet McDonald refused repeated orders to drop the knife even though he was injured, Van Dyke said. McDonald seemed to be trying to get up after the officer stopped firing, so Van Dyke reloaded – as he was trained to do – and fired on the knife, he said.
"I could see him start to get up with his left hand on the ground, I see his left shoulder start to get up, I still see him holding that knife in his right hand without letting go," Van Dyke said. "His eyes are still splashed.His face has no expression."
He told the jurors, "I kept looking at the knife and I shot him, I just wanted him to get rid of that knife."
But a prosecutor pointed out inconsistencies in the description of the fatal encounter by Van Dyke.
The prosecution stated that Van Dyke fired unnecessarily within six seconds of arriving at the scene and struck McDonald 16 times.
Dashcam video
The shooting was captured on a grainy video of the police. Van Dyke said he had shot in self-defense after McDonald threw himself on him with the knife. But the video of the dashcam – which a judge ordered the city to release 13 months after the shooting – showed that McDonald's was moving away from the police rather than picking on them.
During cross-examination, Jody Gleason, one of the prosecutors, attempted to challenge Van Dyke's assertion that McDonald's would have lifted the knife.
"You have been sitting here for several days and have watched several videos … Have you ever seen Laquan McDonald doing this on any of these videos?" Gleason asked.
Van Dyke said that the video of the dashcam's shooting and an animated recreation of the shooting presented by the defense did not show his point of view. But he acknowledged that he had not seen McDonald lift the knife in recess.
The video of the dashboard shows McDonald walking to a fence to his right when Van Dyke's squad car stops, facing the teenager to his left.
CNN's Susannah Cullinane contributed to this report.
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