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Testimony being completed during the murder trial of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, the two parties will return to the courthouse on Thursday to present their latest arguments in a high-profile case that has unearthed many lines of racial divides in Chicago and raised questions about how the city police its citizens.
Prosecutors are expected to argue – as they later did – that Van Dyke, a white police officer who worked in some of the city's most difficult neighborhoods, shot Laquan McDonald, 17, in October 2014, because he was a "black boy". "The audacity to ignore the police." They will rely heavily on a video of the police dashboard camera – viewed dozens of times by jurors for 10 days of testimony – showing Van Dyke knocking McDonald's 16 times, with lots of bullets coming in after the teenager is crumpled. homeless.
Van Dyke's lawyers will in turn explain that the former officer thought McDonald was considering attacking him as the teenager walked high on PCP while ignoring orders to drop a 3-inch knife. As throughout the trial, the defense team will implore the jury to disregard the famous Dashcam video because it does not show the scene from the officer's point of view – the only point of view that counts , did he declare.
"There have been some victories … on both sides," said Dean Angelo Sr., former president of the Chicago Police Union, representing grassroots officers. "But there are also 12 people who have to make their decision. Juries are very difficult to read. I do not think anyone can choose how the decision will be made. "
Van Dyke, 40, is charged with two counts of first degree murder, 16 aggravated battery charges – one for each bullet fired by Van Dyke – and one count of mischief. ;an official. The officer, suspended without pay since November 2015, has long argued that it was justified to shoot McDonald because he feared for his safety.
There was no explicit reference to racism during the testimony, although the witnesses subtly referred to the color of the skin several times. The defense, for example, commissioned an animated video of the shooting in which the creator had put the McDonald character in a black garment and had him donned a hoodie, despite the video evidence showing him wearing jeans with large light-colored pockets and hooded sweatshirt lowered.
The designer also stated that he usually did not put skin color on animated characters, but he did so in this case. In the video, as in real life, McDonald's is black and Van Dyke is white.
At the bar, Van Dyke termed McDonald's "policeman" term of a "black man" wearing a hoodie at least four times during his testimony.
The actual lawsuit pending in Leighton's criminal court, said Reverend Gregory Livingston, pastor at New Hope Baptist Church, "is a black man against a Chicago police department."
"Because of the legacy of mistrust that exists between the Chicago order forces and the black Chicago, the Van Dyke affair is symbolic," Livingston said. "What is symbolic is the uneven application of justice that has existed in Chicago in the black community.So, even if he is a police officer, what has to happen here for the black community to have a sense of justice is that no one seems to be above the law. "
Before the jury begins to deliberate, Judge Vincent Gaughan of Cook County will likely read a long list of instructions on the law of Illinois. The instructions, which have not yet been made public, will provide the jury with a roadmap while answering questions about the reasonableness of Van Dyke's fears when he fired with his firearm.
Many legal experts have told the Chicago Tribune that the case would be won or lost with the jury's instructions.
The lawyers were still discussing the instructions Wednesday afternoon. It was therefore uncertain to tell the jurors that they could convict Van Dyke of second-degree murder – not just the first-degree charges for which he had been charged. If this instruction is given, it could prove crucial.
One or the other party may request that the jurors have the opportunity to convict Van Dyke of something less than first degree murder. The judge may also decide to do it himself, although experts have told the Tribune that this is rare.
A second-degree murder, formerly known as willful homicide in Illinois, could give the Van Dyke jury an opportunity to reach a compromise. The law allows jurors to convict Van Dyke of the same murder charge if they find that he believes the shooting is justified, but that his fear is unreasonable.
Judges may authorize the investigation if they believe that the evidence supports the least accusation and fear to be dismissed on appeal if they do not include it. With testimonials from police officers on the spot, expert witnesses and Van Dyke himself on the reasonableness of his fear, the threshold seems to have easily been surpassed.
But it is unclear whether Van Dyke's defense team wants jurors to have any options. When he chose a jury instead that the judge alone decides his fate at a trial, Mr. Van Dyke said that he was taking an approach at all or not at all, have said some lawyers.
At one trial, Gaughan could have found the officer guilty of second degree, without either side. Without instruction, a jury might be more likely to acquit it outright or, at the very least, not be able to reach a unanimous verdict.
Community activists have indicated that they would support a second-degree finding, saying that justice would be done as long as Van Dyke is convicted of a crime involving the word "murder". William Calloway, who has been at the forefront of protests against the shooting, told reporters earlier this week that activists have long wondered whether prosecutors should have charged the officer with murder on the second degree.
Van Dyke was also charged with serious bodily injury, but Calloway said that a conviction for this alleged crime would not be enough on its own.
"We are comfortable with the second degree," he said. "But nothing less than a conviction for murder and the city has the right to be upset."
Under Illinois law, however, second-degree murder is more punishable than aggravated punishment. Second degree murder does not even entail a mandatory prison sentence – offenders can be sentenced to between four and twenty years of imprisonment or even probation. And in Illinois, people convicted of second-degree murder typically serve about half of their sentence.
An aggravated battery with a condemnation for firearm carries a sentence of at least six to 30 years in prison – and 85 percent of that time must be served.
If the jurors are inclined to reach a verdict of compromise, they may even acquit the second degree murder and have him convicted for aggravated battery, without realizing that the charges against them are punishable. a heavier sentence.
"It sounds worse, but it's not," said criminal defense lawyer Adam Sheppard. "If he was convicted of second degree murder and acquitted of aggravated punishment with a gun, it would be much better for him."
Asking for a second degree instruction involves another level of risk to the defense. The way in which the instruction is written is complex and can be confusing. Jurors must find that prosecutors have proven all the elements of first degree murder. Next, they must decide whether the defense has demonstrated "it is more likely than true" that Van Dyke considered it justified, but that this belief was unreasonable.
But legal experts say that it would not be wise for Van Dyke's lawyers to oppose a second-degree option. In fact, the defense could have spoken directly to this issue by calling a police psychologist to testify to Van Dyke's state of mind that night.
Psychologist Laurence Miller told the jurors that it was reasonable for Van Dyke to pull the trigger given his "perceptual reality" of the situation.
Van Dyke, for one, acknowledged that he had made tactical mistakes in answering the call. He also acknowledged that McDonald's did not seem to attack him in the video of the dashcam or in a computer-generated animation prepared by the defense, but he insisted that none of the videos showed his perception.
"In this case, I think that second-degree murder is a victory for the defense," said Andrea Lyon, a law professor at the University of Valparaiso and former assistant to the Cook County Public Defender.
Under Illinois law, the prosecution does not need to prove that the shooting was premeditated to obtain a first degree murder conviction. Instead, they must prove that Van Dyke intended to kill or cause great injury to McDonald when he shot with his gun or that he knew that shooting at McDonald's could " create a high probability of death or serious bodily harm.
Van Dyke testified that he was trying to pull McDonald's hand from the knife while lying on the sidewalk, not knowing how much he had hurt him.
But Miller, the defense psychologist, told the jury that shortly before Van Dyke's arrival at the scene, he had told his partner that he might have to shoot the offender.
"Oh my God, we're going to have to shoot the guy," Van Dyke recalls in an interview with the psychologist.
Van Dyke also knew that the police had asked a Taser to control McDonald's, but he also openly asked why the police had not shot the teenager while he had punctured their car tire and scraped a windshield said Miller.
"Why did not they shoot him if he attacks them?" Van Dyke asked his partner, according to Miller.
Legal experts, including veteran defense lawyer Terry Ekl, who believes Van Dyke played well on the witness stand, told the Tribune that the statements were damning.
"It showed that he had an aggressive state of mind even before he got there," Ekl said. "It shows a predisposition. I thought it was important.
Both parties officially rested Wednesday after 44 days of testimony from 44 witnesses. The mother of the murdered teenager, Tina Hunter, attended the trial for several days but she did not testify despite pressure from the defense to call her.
In addition to Van Dyke, four Chicago police officers testified about their meeting with McDonald's at the scene.
None of them fired, but Van Dyke's partner, Joseph Walsh, testified that the two men had "a reasonable fear" for their safety at the time of the shooting – the legal threshold for the deadly force of a police officer.
In one of the most dramatic moments of the trial, Walsh – who testified for the charge under the immunity while he was awaiting trial – conspired to conceal the shootout – left the witness stand at the request of the defense team and showed how, according to him, McDonald had been threatened. them with a knife.
Later, in one of the strongest moments of the charge, Van Dyke acknowledged that neither the dashcam video nor the computer-generated animation of the defense allowed McDonald's to make the aggressive decision described by the one or other of the police officers.
In the end, experts predict that the jury's interpretation of the dashcam video will decide Van Dyke's fate.
The jury, consisting of an African-American woman, an Asian man, three Hispanic women, four white women and three white men, is expected to begin its deliberations as early as Thursday afternoon and continue on weekend if necessary.
In large-scale trials, the judge sequestered juries in hotels in the region for the duration of the deliberations.
"They have the video and they have the testimony of (Van Dyke), and it's going to be the key," said long-time defense lawyer Joseph Lopez, adding that he would not surprised to see an acquittal or a suspended jury. "I'm not sure you can get 12 jurors to agree on anything in this case."
Megan Crepeau from Chicago Tribune contributed.
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