Oh hell. The Chicago shooting of a Laquan McDonald was released this evening. I will not post the link but it is all over the web and is not difficult to find. It is not “gross” but it is disgusting in the actions of the officer(s) involved.
Here are the facts:
(1) Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke shot him 16 times on a street in October of 2014. McDonald was holding a knife but did not pose an active threat to the officers. He was at least 12 feet away and walking parallel to the officers (probably more like 15 feet depending on the road width).
(2) Officers entered a Burger King to review the footage of McDonald’s actions leading up to the shooting, though not of the shooting itself. The police were in there for 3 hours. The next day investigators found 86 minutes of footage - all right around the time of the incident - had been erased. The police erased the events leading up to the shooting.
(3) The DA’s office saw this video less than two weeks after the shooting and did not charge the officer.
(4) Chicago paid the family $5m to make this go away. As part of the settlement the judge ordered that the video could not be released by the family.
(5) Chicago was sued to be forced to release the video. A judge ordered the footage released on November 19th, 2015.
(6) The DA suddenly decided to charge the officer with 1st degree murder today. The judge in point 5 said the footage had to be released by tomorrow. Remember, the DA had seen the footage over a year ago and it took the public release of the footage for them to act to charge the officer.
(7) The video shows the victim being shot 16 times. He’s shot in the head on the first bullet, spins and falls to the pavement. The officer continues to fire, reloads and continues to shoot the prone, twitching victim. There is clearly a puff of smoke from a bullet ricocheting off the pavement 15 seconds after the initial head shot. It is incredibly damning, disturbing and disgusting footage.
With all that said I think there is going to be a fair chance the officer gets off. The only reason the officer is getting charged is because the video is being released. That means the DA’s office wants no part of this case. They do not want to charge him. They do not want to convict him. Thus I wonder if they are stacking the deck against the probability of a conviction already.
(8) The DA charged him with first degree murder. I wonder if this is a setup to get the jury to acquit the officer. In some jurisdictions a jury cannot consider a lesser charge (2nd degree murder, manslaughter, etc.). I do not know the law in Illinois but I wonder if this is the case. They may have a difficult time proving first degree murder here because that generally means it has to be premeditated. If this is not premeditated then it is not first degree murder and if the jury can not choose a lesser charge then he walks.
(9) The defense will surely argue that the first shot was justified. It is not but I think even with the video you might get some on the jury to believe that- especially if they can change the jurisdiction. The first shot hit him in the head. If they can say that was the killing shot, then the other 15 bullets may become irrelevant so shooting him in the head 15 seconds later is no longer murder. Since to the best of my knowledge there are no other pending charges, then there is nothing to convict on all subsequent shots.
