CHICAGO — After more than 1,200 days in custody for the murder of Laquan McDonald, former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke is about to go home.
The white patrol officer’s decision on Oct. 20, 2014, to fire 16 shots into McDonald as the Black teenager walked away from cops while holding a knife once seemed destined to alter the trajectory of a city long plagued by allegations of police brutality and a code of silence that allowed the routine trampling of the rights of citizens.
And in many ways, the city Van Dyke will return to has changed.
The mayor whose mishandling of the crisis helped derail a third term is gone — now the newly minted U.S. ambassador to Japan. The Chicago Police Department has seen wholesale changes in leadership.
Body-worn cameras are now the norm for beat cops, as it was a video of the teen’s killing that spread around the globe, and videos of shooting incidents that used to be kept under wraps are now released to the public as a matter of policy. A federal consent decree is in place with the hopes of ushering in even more reforms.
But in other ways, Van Dyke’s prosecution has not turned out to be the watershed moment many hoped for. Progress on the consent decree benchmarks has been frustratingly slow. Trust between the police and the communities they serve is more frayed than ever. The union representing rank-and-file officers has become increasingly radicalized. There has been an alarming spike in violent crime for which city leadership has had few answers.
Cara Hendrickson, a former assistant to the Illinois attorney general who helped draft the parameters of the federal consent decree, said that despite the hard work of many stakeholders to overhaul the Police Department, the city has come up woefully short in establishing a modern system of police accountability, including early intervention programs to get support and training to officers in need and identify and discipline problem officers.
“Not nearly enough has been done to ensure that there will not be another Jason Van Dyke,” said Hendrickson, who is now the executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Business and Professional People for the Public Interest.
Randall Samborn, a former spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office who made an early pitch for a federal “pattern and practice” investigation of Chicago police, said “it’s way too soon to tell” what the final legacy of the Van Dyke case will be, particularly in deterring unjustified use of lethal force.
“Right now, the city is in a kind of quagmire of reform,” said Samborn, who now heads his own consulting firm, Randall A. Samborn & Associates. “The consent decree will continue to plod along for years. With Van Dyke, people can reasonably differ over the length of his sentence and whether he should be released early, but his prosecution and conviction are what was important in setting a standard of accountability.”
Exactly where Van Dyke has been serving his 81-month sentence has been shrouded in mystery, and prison officials have declined to comment on his release, citing an interstate agreement allowing other jurisdictions to house high-profile prisoners in secret.
McDonald’s relatives, however, have said they were notified by authorities that the former officer was to be released Thursday.
McDonald’s killing, like many prior shootings by Chicago police, barely made news when it happened. But when gruesome dashcam video of the shooting was ordered released more than a year later, it sparked a firestorm of protests, prompted the firing of then-police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, and allegations of a City Hall coverup by Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration.
Van Dyke became the first Chicago police officer to be charged with murder for an on-duty shooting in half a century, and the fallout continued. A team of special prosecutors led by then-Kane County State’s Attorney Joseph McMahon was appointed to handle the Van Dyke case; then-State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez lost her primary bid to Kim Foxx, who ran on a platform heavily criticizing Alvarez’s handling of the McDonald shooting.
The allegations against Van Dyke were in many ways a harbinger for other cases nationwide that put a spotlight on the excessive use of force by police on Black citizens, most notably the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis that led to nationwide unrest in the summer of 2020.
Convicted by a jury in October 2018 of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm, Van Dyke received a relatively lenient sentence of 6 3/4 years behind bars, a term made even lighter by a procedural technicality that made him eligible for a 50% reduction for good behavior. Van Dyke in 2020 withdrew his appeal, meaning his release will close the final chapter in the case.
Though it was widely reported at the time he was sentenced, Van Dyke’s projected release date of February 2022 seemed to catch many by surprise as it grew closer. Activists are planning a Feb. 3 rally in Federal Plaza and have announced their intention to try to shut down parts of downtown in protest.
In recent weeks, a cadre of Black leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, have joined some members of McDonald’s extended family in calling on the U.S. Justice Department to bring federal civil rights charges against Van Dyke that could land him back in prison.
At least one person on the jury that convicted Van Dyke thought the sentence he received was too lenient. Charlene Cooke, who was the only Black person on the panel, told the Chicago Tribune last week she thought it was a “slap on the wrist.”
“To me, it’s an insult to the jurors and the time we spent (during the trial),” Cooke, a 63-year-old retired FedEx driver, said in a telephone interview. “It’s an insult to the family, like Laquan McDonald meant nothing.”
McDonald’s great-uncle, the Rev. Marvin Hunter, said that while he believes Van Dyke’s sentence was legally improper, most of the family does not support the effort to bring Van Dyke up on new charges.
“My hope is that Jason Van Dyke went to jail and was rehabilitated,” he told the Tribune in a recent interview. “I hope he becomes a better man. … If he gets 1,000 more years it’s not going to bring Laquan back, so we would be better served as a country and as a people if he became better. Our family, we’re not victims, and we’re not going to live our life as victims. We want to be better and not bitter.”
Choice ‘I will live with forever’
Van Dyke, 43, was last a free man on Oct. 5, 2018, the day the jury found him guilty after about 7 1/2 hours of deliberations. After Cook County Circuit Judge Vincent Gaughan ordered him immediately taken into custody, Van Dyke said his goodbyes to his wife and family, then put his hands behind his back as sheriff’s deputies escorted him to a lockup behind the courtroom.
Three months later, Van Dyke was back in Gaughan’s courtroom for his sentencing hearing, which featured hours of often-tearful testimony from Van Dyke’s relatives and supporters as well as emotional accounts from purported victims of his abuse during his police career.
Toward the end of the hearing, Van Dyke himself stood and said the day he shot McDonald was the worst of his life. “The last thing I wanted to do was to shoot Laquan McDonald,” he said, head bent as he read from a piece of paper. “It is a choice that I will live with forever.”
One witness called by the prosecution wept uncontrollably on the stand as he described in detail how Van Dyke allegedly brutalized him after a traffic stop in 2007. The man required two surgeries after Van Dyke threw him down to the floor in the back seat of a squad car, he said, and he still had not regained full use of his arms.
McMahon told the Tribune last week that he recalled that witness “breaking down” emotionally in the hallway outside the courtroom, afraid to testify.
“I needed the judge to hear about how Van Dyke had treated other people,” McMahon told the Tribune. “I know … how difficult it was going to be for him to testify in open court. And I think it was probably damaging to him to have to go in there and testify, (but) to tell as much of the story of Jason Van Dyke as possible, I felt like I needed to put him on the witness stand.”
Prosecutors had asked Gaughan for a sentence of 18 to 20 years on aggravated battery, which would have required Van Dyke to serve about 85% of the term. Van Dyke’s defense, by contrast, argued that he should be sentenced only on the second-degree murder, which carries a sentence of probation or four to 20 years in prison, with the possibility of day-for-day credit for good behavior.
Gaughan sided with the defense in making a key finding that dramatically reduced Van Dyke’s exposure, ruling that second-degree murder was actually the more egregious of the two charges and should be the one Van Dyke was sentenced on, even though a previous state appellate ruling had found the opposite.
“Is it more serious for Laquan McDonald to be shot by a firearm or is it more serious for Laquan McDonald to be murdered by a firearm?” Gaughan said in explaining his reasoning. “Common sense comes to an easy answer on that in this specific case.”
When he announced his sentence, Gaughan said he expected “100%” of those in the courtroom to be disappointed. Afterward, Van Dyke’s lead attorney, Daniel Herbert, said his client “truly felt great.”
“He was not just relieved, he was happy,” Herbert told reporters after the sentencing. “It’s the first time I’ve seen the guy — honestly since this whole ordeal started — where he was happy. He’s certainly not happy about going to jail. He’s certainly not happy about missing his family. But he’s happy about the prospect of life ahead of him.”
In his recent interview with the Tribune, McMahon acknowledged that for Van Dyke to be released less than four years later can be “difficult to accept” for some. But any time in prison is difficult, no matter how short the sentence — particularly for an ex-cop, McMahon said.
“I don’t think (Van Dyke) had an easy sentence,” he said. “And I understand people wish that his prison sentence was longer but I think — what I said three-plus years ago now … was that with the passage of time, hopefully what people remember about this case is that a police officer can be and will be and was held accountable for his crimes in this case, for the killing of Laquan McDonald, and that’s what I hope people will remember.”
Prison time
After the January 2019 sentencing, Van Dyke was transferred to a downstate prison for a few weeks, where he was held in isolation as a standard security measure.
In early February, Van Dyke was moved to a federal detention center in Danbury, Connecticut, for unexplained reasons, his attorneys said. Shortly after he was processed at the medium-security facility and moved into the general population, several people attacked him in his cell.
“My No. 1 fear for my husband has always been his safety, it always has been that somebody is going to get him and hurt him, and the worst has happened,” Van Dyke’s wife, Tiffany, told reporters at the time.
Van Dyke was put into a segregated unit after the attack, his attorneys said.
Federal prison records show Van Dyke was released from federal custody in November 2019, again for unexplained reasons. News reports stated he was transferred briefly to a state-run facility in Maryland, then again to an undisclosed location.
For the next two years, he was off the radar. An Illinois Department of Corrections spokesman declined to say where Van Dyke was being held, citing an interstate agreement where high-profile prisoners can be kept off databases of inmates available to the public online.
“Jason Van Dyke remains under the jurisdiction of the Illinois Department of Corrections, but is not in our custody,” the agency said in a recent emailed statement. “For safety and security purposes, the Department does not discuss details concerning individuals who have transferred under the terms of the Interstate Corrections Compact Agreement.”
The only indication of where Van Dyke may have spent prison time in Illinois comes from a two-page release order from the Prisoner Review Board, the government agency responsible for scheduling a prisoner’s supervised release program.
The document, obtained by the Tribune through an open records request, stated Van Dyke had been at the Taylorville minimum-security prison near Springfield as of September 2021 when the order was signed.
Van Dyke must now complete his term of mandatory supervised release, Illinois’ version of parole. The only requirement marked on the review board’s form was that he participate in a cognitive behavioral therapy program — a common measure aimed at reducing recidivism.
‘Trying to move on with his life’
In light of the relatively lenient sentence, Van Dyke’s attorneys backed away from their promises to appeal his conviction.
But not long afterward, McMahon and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who had just begun his first term, decided to bring the case directly to the state Supreme Court.
Gaughan’s sentence relied on improper legal reasoning, they argued. Since Illinois law makes aggravated battery with a firearm the more serious offense, the state Supreme Court should order Gaughan to resentence the ex-patrol officer on those convictions instead.
The state’s highest court declined to hear the petition by a 4-2 vote. No explanation was given for the court’s refusal to hear the case. But the decision fell largely along political lines, with the court’s three Republicans joining Anne Burke, a Democrat who is married to longtime Chicago Ald. Edward Burke, a onetime Chicago police officer who is facing federal corruption charges.
The two dissenting judges both noted that Gaughan made his ruling relying on a dissenting opinion that stated the exact opposite of the majority, and the majority opinion is the law of the land.
McMahon speculated in his recent interview with the Tribune that Van Dyke chose not to pursue an appeal in part because an appellate court could have chosen to kick the case back for a re-sentencing.
“I think the prospects of getting the conviction overturned were extremely low and the risk of being sent back to the trial court for resentencing were much higher,” he said.
Jennifer Blagg, one of Van Dyke’s attorneys, disputed that, saying that if prosecutors had tried to argue Van Dyke’s sentencing as part of the appeals process, they would not be on solid legal ground.
Van Dyke formally dropped his appeal in the fall of 2020, before the case had been fully briefed.
“He’s trying to move on with his life and move forward,” Blagg told the Tribune at the time. “He thought it was in the best interest of all the parties involved, including the McDonald family, that there be some finality.”
A federal look
As the drama of the criminal case against Jason Van Dyke was unfolding before the public, another probe into McDonald’s shooting was going on behind the scenes, with the U.S. attorneys office and FBI looking into filing possible charges against Van Dyke and other officers involved.
Then-U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon took the unusual step of confirming the investigation in April 2015 — seven months before the release of the dashcam video that would force the hand of the Cook County state’s attorney’s office to move forward with charges against Van Dyke.
Fardon confirmed that the investigation was still ongoing in September 2016, nearly a year after Van Dyke was charged with murder. It remained active at least until 2019, when prosecutors asked a federal judge to keep a search warrant related to the probe under seal until the investigation was complete, which was estimated in the filing to be August 2019, court records show.
No federal charges were ever filed in the case. This month, several prominent Black leaders cited the case against former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin, who was charged both in state court and federally with Floyd’s death, in renewing calls for the U.S. Department of Justice to go after Van Dyke.
Though there is no statute of limitations to bring a civil rights case involving a fatality, it would be exceedingly rare for the U.S. Attorney’s Office to charge Van Dyke now, given his conviction and sentencing for the same incident in another jurisdiction.
A spokesman for U.S. Attorney John Lausch declined to comment.
Blagg, one of Van Dyke’s attorneys, told the Tribune last week “justice isn’t served in the court of public opinion, justice is handed out in a courtroom.”
“Jurors heard Jason’s case. A judge gave Jason his sentence. And even if you don’t agree with it, you have to appreciate the long-term consequences of what you’re arguing for,” she said. “Arguing that someone should be charged by the feds because you don’t agree w the judge’s sentencing decision could have far-reaching consequences in our society.”
Hunter also told the Tribune he feared that charging Van Dyke twice for the same set of actions could set a bad precedent. Most of the family does not support further charges against the ex-cop, he said.
“I am not an advocate for Jason Van Dyke, he has not asked for forgiveness … but am I going to live my life harboring hate?” Hunter said. “The answer is no. I don’t. And my family don’t.”
If politicians and activists wanted to help, they should have supported Raoul’s push at the state Supreme Court to re-examine the sentence Gaughan handed down - instead of pushing for Van Dyke to be imprisoned again for something separate, Hunter said.
“If a man serves his time, he needs to be freed,” Hunter said. “If we’re going to be a civilized society we must follow the doggone laws and have them work for everybody the right way.”
———
(Chicago Tribune’s Christy Gutowski contributed to this report.)
———
