CHICAGO — Just after midnight Thursday, as the wind blew whirls of snow around a remote downstate prison, one of Illinois’ highest-profile prisoners walked out of custody under the cover of darkness.
Ex-Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke spent a little more than three years behind bars for the 2014 murder of Laquan McDonald, a shooting captured on police video that sent shock waves from neighborhood streets to the mayor’s office at City Hall.
The eyes of the world were on Van Dyke’s trial, almost every moment of which was livestreamed. But his time in prison was cloaked in secrecy to the very end.
For years, prison officials refused to disclose where he was being held. And the details of his departure were not disclosed until more than 12 hours afterward, when a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Corrections confirmed Van Dyke had been released from a minimum-security facility in downstate Taylorville at 12:15 a.m. Central time.
The lack of information surrounding Van Dyke’s exit from custody added a new layer to a case that has sparked outrage from activists and Black leaders who decried Van Dyke’s lenient sentence and called for renewed civil rights charges against Van Dyke. Protesters including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and McDonald’s grandmother, Tracie Hunter, crowded near Federal Plaza downtown in a demonstration calling for Van Dyke to face federal charges.
While most of the protesters were outside, several were inside the lobby of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, and after some time, U.S. marshals appeared to escort them away. Some were taken into custody; others, like Hunter, were not.
“It’s just so terrible how the system and the laws (are) ... that wasn’t no time served, period, at all, and I want federal charges against this man,” she told reporters afterward. While Hunter and one of McDonald’s aunts have joined the call for new charges, McDonald’s great-uncle has told the Chicago Tribune that they do not speak for the majority of the family.
Elorm Blake, a spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service in Chicago, confirmed that nine people — five women and four men — were taken into custody Thursday and charged with misdemeanor civil contempt for violating the chief judge’s order governing demonstrations at Dirksen. The arrestees were processed and went before a federal judge Thursday evening, she said.
Among those arrested was Ja’Mal Green, a Chicago activist who has repeatedly pushed for federal charges against Van Dyke, a source said. Other names of those arrested as well as specific court information were not immediately released.
Bishop Tavis Grant, national field director at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, said it’s “significant” that some activists went to U.S. Attorney John Lausch’s offices and delivered a letter to his staff calling for Van Dyke to face additional charges.
“It’s in the spirit of Emmett Till, it’s in the spirit of Trayvon Martin,” Grant said. “So many cases ... go unresolved and leave this sense of angst and anger and frustration in Black and brown communities that our lives don’t matter.”
Protesters later stepped off the curb and onto Dearborn Street and others in the Loop chanting for more to be done in the case.
A Cook County jury convicted Van Dyke in 2018 of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery — one for each shot he fired into McDonald, who was walking away from officers holding a knife. It was an enormously high-profile case, since dashboard camera footage of the 2014 shooting sparked widespread protests and political upheaval. Van Dyke became the first officer to be found guilty of murder in an on-duty shooting in about half a century.
Word of the ex-officer’s release spread last month and caught many by surprise, though he was expected all along to leave custody in February 2022.
At sentencing, Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan chose to sentence Van Dyke on the second-degree murder conviction — not the aggravated battery counts — meaning Van Dyke faced a lower sentencing range. And a procedural technicality gives inmates day-for-day credit for good behavior on many felony convictions, including second-degree murder, meaning he only had to serve about half his sentence.
Since the January 2019 sentencing, Van Dyke has served time at a downstate prison, a federal detention center in Connecticut, and at least one undisclosed location as part of an interstate agreement where high-profile prisoners can be kept off databases of inmates available to the public online.
The Illinois Department of Corrections has for the past two years declined to say where Van Dyke was being held “for safety and security purposes.” But a two-page release order from the Prisoner Review Board, the government agency responsible for scheduling a prisoner’s supervised release program, stated Van Dyke had been at the Taylorville facility minimum-security prison.
Officials have offered no explanation why Van Dyke should be afforded so much secrecy when the locations of other high-profile inmates — including other convicted police officers, terrorists and gang leaders — are routinely disclosed in public databases across the country.
That includes Derek Chauvin, the white Minnesota police officer who was convicted last year of murdering George Floyd, a Black man, by kneeling on his neck, a case that sparked nationwide protests and unrest, including in Chicago. Although he is arguably the highest-profile imprisoned former law enforcement officer in the country, Chauvin’s location, booking photos and release information are readily available on the website for the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
And it is unclear why Van Dyke was released in the middle of the night, or whether less high-profile inmates are afforded the same opportunity for a quiet exit.
No news cameras were stationed outside Taylorville on Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. A handful of journalists showed up outside Van Dyke’s parents’ home in DuPage County later Thursday; all the blinds were drawn, and nobody answered when a Tribune reporter knocked at the door.
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.
Van Dyke’s release comes as Black leaders, as well as Illinois’ two Democratic senators, continue to pressure the U.S. Justice Department over a federal civil rights probe into the McDonald killing that ended quietly after Van Dyke was convicted in state court of second-degree murder and aggravated battery with a firearm. Van Dyke, who is white, was captured on police video shooting the Black teenager 16 times as he walked away from police with a knife.
On Tuesday, the president of the national chapter of the NAACP sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland saying the lack of resolution in the federal case, coupled with Van Dyke’s pending release, was “clearly alarming” to the Black community.
“We trust that you find the matters alarming as well and join with us in our call for closure of that federal grand jury investigation,” wrote NAACP President Derrick Johnson. He also asked for Garland’s commitment in “moving forward with appropriate and applicable federal charges” based on the evidence.
Hours later, Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth penned a letter of their own noting that the state conviction does not preclude the filing of federal charges, citing the recent cases against ex-Minneapolis officer Chauvin, who was charged in both jurisdictions with the May 2020 murder of George Floyd.
“We urge the Justice Department to carefully and expeditiously complete its investigation,” the senators’ letter concluded.
A Justice Department spokesperson said the department has received the letters and “will review the information,” but declined further comment.
When asked Tuesday whether she would support bringing federal charges against Van Dyke, State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said she was not in a position to give federal prosecutors direction. But Van Dyke’s sentence was not appropriate given the seriousness of the crime he committed, she said. If he had been sentenced on his aggravated battery convictions, he would have faced a far longer term, and he would have had to serve more than half of it.
“I would suggest and hope and pray ... that any and all those who have the power to make sure that there’s accountability for the death of Laquan McDonald do everything that’s in their power to hold him accountable,” said Foxx, whose office did not handle Van Dyke’s prosecution.
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(Chicago Tribune’s Armando Sanchez, Stephanie Casanova, John J. Kim and Annie Sweeney contributed to this story.)
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