In 2012 an off duty Chicago police officer named Dante Servin stopped his car in front of front of a group of unarmed black people, pulled out his handgun and fired multiple times into the crowd, hitting one man in the hand and killing Rekia Boyd, 22.
State Prosecutor Anita Alvarez would have no doubt preferred to do nothing; her cozy relationship with law enforcement was legendary even by prosecutor standards. However the egregious details of this case forced her to do something. So a year and a half later she charged Servin with involuntary manslaughter. This is almost literally the least she could do, short of issuing Servin a parking ticket, and her decision put the trial Judge Dennis J. Porter in a bind. You can hardly call it involuntary when someone points a semi-automatic handgun at a group of people and pulls the trigger over and over again. Porter did not have the option to decide what kind of crime Dante Servin committed. Either he committed involuntary manslaughter or he didn’t. Since the killing was pretty clearly not involuntary, Porter let him go. It is hard to argue with people who feel that Alvarez used her prosecutorial discretion to keep Dante Servin free.
So Anita Alvarez decided to charge Chicago officer Jason Van Dyke with murder for shooting Laquan McDonald. Great! You saw the video. Even (some) other cops agree this guy should be locked up. But do you think Anita Alvarez went a little over the top charging Van Dyke with first degree murder? Sure he did something terrible. But I suggest people resist the temptation to see the charge and fast forward to the part where Van Dyke gets old in jail. Think for a moment about the standard the state has to meet to convict him. It won’t be enough to show that Van Dyke acted recklessly or even got caught up in the heat of the moment and killed McDonald because he was scared or thought it would be fun.
First-degree murder is defined as an unlawful killing that is both willful and premeditated, meaning that it was committed after planning or “lying in wait” for the victim.
The defense only has to prove that Jason Van Dyke did not plan this in advance and lie in wait for the opportunity to kill Laquan McDonald. Van Dyke was a cop, responding to a dangerous situation. Everyone agrees he did not need to shoot that young man. In fact his record shows that Jason Van Dyke had no business being a cop at all. But his defense does not need to worry about that. They only need to show the he did not commit premeditated murder. That seems like an awfully high bar to set, don’t you think?
Betty Cracker
Rep. Luis Gutierrez has had enough of Alvarez’s bullshit.
Patricia Kayden
Alvarez needs to step down too. Ditto Rahm Emmanuel. The decision to wait over a year to file any charges against Van Dyke was obviously politically motivated.
BGinCHI
@Betty Cracker: Wow. That must have been a tough call for him in terms of IL and local Latino/a politics.
But good for Luis (alum of the institution where I teach). Glad to see a principled stand.
Alvarez has, generally, had a good rep around the city in terms of non-police related stuff. This is another indication that it’s not only the individual actors but the system that needs a major overhaul. An outspoken reform-minded SA will be an asset for the city.
Also Rahm is going to be toast in the next election. If he lets us have one.
Sherparick
Unlike the involuntary manslaughter charge, where the judge thought the evidence pointed to the more serious crime not charged (voluntary manslaughter or second degree murder), the first degree mudred charge has the elements of the lesser charges fairly included in the charge (unless Alvarez has done something real funky), and hence a jury or judge can bring in a guilty verdict on the “lesser included charge.” http://illinoiscaselaw.com/lesser-included-offense-illinois-analysis/
rikyrah
As the panic begins to creep up….
Latest polls:
A new national Quinnipiac poll:
1. Donald Trump: 27% (was 24% in a Quinnipiac poll a month ago)
2. Marco Rubio: 17% (14% last month)
3. Ted Cruz: 16% (13% last month)
3. Ben Carson: 16% (23% last month)
5. Jeb Bush: 5% (4% last month)
Ben
A prosecutor has the option to charge with lesser included offenses. So the jury may find that while a prosecutor did not prove first degree murder, they could still find the defendant guilty of second degree murder or manslaughter.
So the question is will Alvarez include charges with the lesser included offenses. If she does not, then I think we can say she’s using her discretion to ensure this cop is free.
We need a special prosecutor anyway.
SFAW
Tim –
Yeah, I was wondering how it got to be first degree, but wasn’t smart enough to see that it was (likely) a sham. I guess if she had charged him with Genocide or Crimes Against Humanity, I might have figured it out on my own, however. Maybe.
rikyrah
OF COURSE, she’s going it again….
This is going to be interesting, watching folks connect all sorts of dots with her corrupt azz.
ruemara
Which is why Van Dyke will walk, just like he managed to walk out on bond despite a 1.5 million bail. And Chicago will, sadly, explode. Not hugely, not badly but the anger and despair has to go somewhere. Rahm may make it to an other election cycle, he may not. We’ll see if we can actually get a shitty, fucked up prosecutor and her shitty cops to suffer the only thing they fear, losing their jobs.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
I can feel the Jeb?-mentum building!
Eric S.
Remembering the Boyd case I’ve been wondering about the 1st degree murder charge myself.
batgirl
@BGinCHI: I don’t think Emanuel is going to run again. He’ll go back to Wall Street or the Hillary administration.
As for Chicagoans and those living in suburban Cook County looking for an alternative to Alvarez this March (or those who want to donate to an opponent), check out Kim Foxx. She is Toni Preckwinkle’s candidate.
max
They only need to show the he did not commit premeditated murder. That seems like an awfully high bar to set, don’t you think?
Yeah, that has the same problems as that guy who shotgunned those kids in the parking lot. Rock-solid on all the elements but premeditation.
But then, we live in a country where this is not even a one-day story:
The black men involved were actually murdered they were merely thrown in prison for years for crimes they didn’t commit by a bunch of Klanboy cops. I don’t think there’s a particularly large distance between that and Chicago’s torture houses, but the Southern accents are enough for the story to be ignored.
max
[‘Charming fucking country we have here.’]
Elmariochi
It doesn’t have to be premeditated:
peach flavored shampoo
I thought the exact same thing when I saw the charges. There’s no way they’ll get a conviction on premeditated murder while the cop was in uniform; it’s too easy for the defense to claim he was responding to the moment and had no opportunity to “premeditate” this crime.
He walks on this, even if his lawyer is a parapalegic lemur.
batgirl
For more about Kim Foxx, Democratic candidate for Cook County State’s Attorney check out this article from Mark Brown in the May Sun-Times.
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: JEB! up 25%, surging in the polls!
BGinCHI
@batgirl: Thanks for the link!
We are out of the country for the year, but I’m hoping to get an absentee ballot if possible (though I’m not sure it is…).
I’m wondering whether Toni is going to finally run for mayor next go-around. She will win if she does. I’d like to see her win, and this woman as SA and maybe Lisa Madigan as Gov.
I know, I know, her father is a crook. But I wonder if she has seen all of that and wants to get beyond it. That’s what I hear about her, but I could be wrong.
BGinCHI
@batgirl: She’s IL PP President too! And a product of local schools as well as a state school for uni and law school. We need that.
elmariochi
It doesn’t have to be premeditated:
Marshall
I am not a lawyer and all that, but I thought that doing something reckless like firing a gun into a crowd was exactly involuntary manslaughter. (It’s not the act that’s involuntary, but the death.) From Wikipedia
In other words, if the death was not an accident, but you can’t prove the intent to commit murder, involuntary manslaughter seems like a reasonable charge, and (more pertinently) it does not seem like Judge Dennis J. Porter had to let that guy go. I would guess that, if there is blame here, Mr. Porter deserves a big chunk of it.
RSR
The whole thing reeks. Definitely needs an independent investigation of some sort.
Also, as @RebelCapitalist pointed out on twitter:
Two of those Chicago officials are convicted; one fled the country after pleading guilty! Rahm sure can pick ’em, huh?
jake that antisoshul soshulist
The first thing I thought of, when I heard the charge was 1st degree, was that it was done to make the bar would be so high that he would not get convicted.
BGinCHI
@RSR: You lie down with dogs…..
The Thin Black Duke
@batgirl: For what it’s worth, I don’t think Hillary is going to want anything to do with Rahm; politically speaking, he’s damaged goods. Wall Street, however, will always make room for another greedy sociopath.
p.a.
It’s 34 years ago now so my memory is clouded, and state laws must differ, but I was on a murder trial jury, and we had the options to acquit or convict for any of 1st, 2nd, manslaughter depending on what we thought the prosecution had proved. I’m pretty sure I remember this correctly because it didn’t jive with what I knew, based on my only legal experience: TV shows.
We ended up convicting for involuntary manslaughter.
OFF TOPIC: the open topic thread is old, so I have an email question. My Android phone’s default/Vz app sucked, so I use the Yahoo email app. If Vz was suck , Yahoo was only .5suck. It’s now ~.8suck. Any free apps you can recommend?
ecks
@SFAW: Of course you can. That’s a TWENTY FIVE PERCENT INCREASE IN SUPPORT! Jebmentum just sploding into action there.
EDIT: Aww, I read further, and AHH got there first. Dagnabbit. Gotta be quick on the draw round here.
Another Holocene Human
@RSR: You got to wonder about the regular slobs who woke up one morning and re-upped on Rahm in the runoff. Why—–???
RSR
Ditto. I have family in Glencoe. I’ll pass the information on.
Escargot
Dr. Google tells me that premeditation isn’t required for first degree in the great state of Illinois, just that the person in the act has the intent to kill. I would appreciate an actual expert to chime in, tho.
batgirl
@BGinCHI: And one of the upsides of Lisa Madigan running for Governor is that I assume her father will finally step down!
Tim F.
@p.a.: the prosecutor can include those as possibilities, or not. We need to watch carefully how Alvarez plays it. To me her decision to go with Murder One is deeply suspicious. This simply is not a case of first-degree murder and I have no doubt she knows that.
BGinCHI
@Another Holocene Human: White devil they knew….
BGinCHI
@batgirl: That’s what everyone says about her. That’s a trade I’ll take as soon as I can get it.
Also…fucking Rauner. Thanks downstate assholes.
batgirl
@Another Holocene Human: Chuy Garcia was never going to win the white vote. He needed the black vote and didn’t get it. Obama made commercials for Emanuel, and I don’t think any major black Chicago politician supported Garcia.
BTW, this is why many in Chicago think Emanuel had something to do with the suppression of the video. He knew he needed the black vote and that the release of this video would hurt him.
rikyrah
UH HUH
UH HUH
Hillary Clinton Calls for Overhaul of Justice System
By AMY CHOZICK
DEC. 1, 2015
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — In the church here where, 60 years ago, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired residents to boycott the local bus network, Hillary Clinton on Tuesday called for overhauling the criminal justice system, saying there is something “profoundly wrong” when black men are disproportionately stopped and searched by the police, arrested or killed.
…………………………….
but in an address that began with a verse from the Book of Psalms — “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” — Mrs. Clinton said there was still much work to be done, noting setbacks in access to voting and in the widespread incarceration of young black men.
The event, organized by the National Bar Association, the country’s largest organization of African-American lawyers and judges, emphasized the role lawyers played in the Montgomery bus boycott, which disrupted this city’s public transportation for more than a year and led to a Supreme Court decision that struck down Alabama laws requiring segregated buses.
The two-day event was one of only a handful of times since Mrs. Clinton announced her candidacy in April that she addressed organizations that were unaffiliated with her campaign and had not endorsed her. She was joined by a lineup of lawyers, elected officials and ministers who have been central in civil rights struggles, past and present.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/us/politics/hillary-clinton-calls-for-overhaul-of-justice-system.html?ribbon-ad-idx=4&rref=politics&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Politics&pgtype=article
Punchy
OT, but whatevs…
Isn’t this going to become….literally…a daily occurance on campuses that allow guns? How can a uni function if everyone is always hiding 4 times a day? What am I not understanding…if a gun-toting individual causes this alarm, then just what chaos awaits if anyone is permitted to pack?
BGinCHI
@batgirl: Amazing that Alvarez decided to stick with Rahm when she could have torpedoed him with that video and handed Chuy the win.
Wonder what she got in return.
Botsplainer
@Patricia Kayden:
Generally speaking, the decision on prosecution is at the state level, not municipal. Emanuel can jam personnel at the policy level in the police department, but has zero control over prosecutor offices. Rank and file cops have insulation from political winds by civil service protections and collective bargaining agreements.
Amir Khalid
Is someone screwing around with the site design again? For no apparent reason, everything on the right-hand column has been moved to below the comment box.
scav
@BGinCHI: I forget, does the usual cursing of the collar counties hold true?
elmariochi
People, in Illinois, first degree murder does not require premeditation.
rikyrah
Ted Cruz Vows to Put Hard-Core Conservatives on Supreme Court
In an exclusive interview, the former Supreme Court litigator reveals how he would reshape the bench if elected to the White House.
Dec 2, 2015
Ted Cruz says Republicans have “an abysmal record” when it comes to picking Supreme Court justices, and it is something the Texas senator promises to rectify if he’s elected president.
Cruz, who argued cases before the Supreme Court as the solicitor general of his state and has taught law school classes on the art of presenting cases to the high court, told Bloomberg Politics in an exclusive interview in Iowa on Monday that his party has a knack for picking eventual heretics who side with liberals on divisive issues.
As examples, he cited Chief Justice John Roberts, an appointee of President George W. Bush, who rejected a challenge to President Barack Obama’s health care law in 2012, and Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, who voted in 2015 to make same-sex marriage a constitutional right. Both cases were decided 5 to 4.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-12-02/ted-cruz-vows-to-put-hard-core-conservatives-on-the-supreme-court?cmpid=BBD120215_POL
rikyrah
PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE.
New York MagazineVerified account
@NYMag
Police officers claim Tamir Rice was warned repeatedly during 2-second confrontation: http://nym.ag/1QT1sA4
Another Holocene Human
@Amir Khalid: For me too. It’s very odd.
rikyrah
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Citizens United and New Media are on a Collision Course
New media is challenging the basic business model of advertisements as a way to pay for television programming. First came remote controls and options like Tivo, which allowed viewers to skip ads. Now, in the age of digital streaming, the number of households that are “cord cutters” (no cable or satellite television service) has increased 60% in the last 5 years.
This evolution comes just as the Supreme Court’s decision on Citizens United allowed for unlimited contributions to campaign super pacs – whose main role has been to pay for expensive television advertising. The conflation of those two developments might help explain why Jeb Bush’s super pac has spent over $15 million on television ads (far more than any other campaign), and yet their candidate has dropped to fifth place in the polls, leading long-time Bush family friend John Sununu to say, “I have no feeling for the electorate anymore. It’s not responding the way it used to.”
We essentially saw the same thing in the 2012 election when Karl Rove’s super pacs had a 1% return on their investment in television ads, while a video recorded by a waiter at a Romney event was likely a game-changer. At some point super pacs are going to have to ask themselves what they should be spending all those millions of dollars on if television advertising doesn’t move the needle on poll numbers, while free media becomes a determining factor.
It’s also interesting to note that a candidate like Donald Trump has spent very little money so far and recently swore off having any super pacs. The reason he’s been able to do that is because he gets a tremendous amount of free media for saying outrageous things. That poses it’s own kind of danger as long as the press prioritizes the sensational over the substantive. But in the end, it is not significantly different from all the free media the Obama campaign got with the video of Romney’s “47%” remarks in 2012.
The one Republican candidate whose super pacs are experimenting more aggressively with the use of new media is Ted Cruz. Kellyanne Conway, who runs one of the Cruz super pacs, recently said that their goal was to be “more surgical, spending on digital, cable, direct mail, radio, in addition to TV.”
Brian Fisher, who runs an organization called “Online for Life” (which has developed apps and social media to connect with women seeking to end a pregnancy), has formed a company called Red Metrics LLC that will serve as the data and digital operation for Cruz’s four Keep the Promise super pacs. One of the visible results of that collaboration is the Facebook page: Reigniting the Promise, which already has over 350,000 followers.
To date, the Cruz super pacs have spent almost nothing on television ads, and yet their candidate is inching up in the polls and his campaign has raised more “hard money” than anyone in the Republican field except Ben Carson. Whether or not Cruz has a chance at actually being the nominee remains to be seen. But when you compare the results of super pac spending on new media vs paid television advertising, it is obvious that there is a new game in town.
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2015/12/citizens-united-and-new-media-are-on.html
BGinCHI
@scav: You mean the people who brought you Joe Walsh?
You better believe it.
rikyrah
He MURDERED Rekia Boyd WITH AN UNREGISTERED FIREARM!!
What would happen to YOU or ME if WE had KILLED someone WITH AN UNREGISTERED FIREARM?
How the PHUCK wasn’t he charged FOR THAT?
Enhanced Voting Techinques
Didn’t Van Dyke reload and shoot again? That would count as premidated, from what I have been told, since it requires Van Dyke to stop and think.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: It is being done for your good, comrade. Be silent and enjoy the improvements.
Bobby Thomson
@Marshall: that’s typically a depraved heart murder. Driving a car through a playground and shooting into a crowd have such a high risk of death that it’s murder even if the defendant subjectively didn’t intend to kill anyone.
I think it’s ridiculous the judge dismissed the lesser charge, though. That’s indefensible.
BGinCHI
@rikyrah: Fear of a black planet makes, and allows, whitey to do almost anything.
SFAW
@ecks:
Maybe Jeb! should do a commercial telling people how YUUUUGE it is. The average Rethug primary voter will think he’s Trump; hilarity ensues.
Germy
@batgirl:
Oh Christ, I hope he stays away from the HRC administration. Emanuel and Arne Duncan are two people I wish had stayed the hell away from Obama, and I hope they keep away from HRC if she wins.
Let them go to Wall Street and have their fun. Please keep them away from policy making.
Germy
@Amir Khalid: the only thing that never changes is change itself.
NickM
@Punchy: This is why open carry is so stupid: as a society, we should be entitled to assume that anyone (other than law enforcement, hunters in rural areas, etc.) displaying a gun in public has bad intent. Otherwise, the only time we can legally react to someone carrying a gun in public and agitated is once they’ve started pulling the trigger, which is too late.
BGinCHI
@Germy: If, when I get back to Chi, I see Arne Duncan in my local, I’m going to punch him in the mouth and then use as my defense the fact that I was standing my ground against his assault on the American educational system.
BGinCHI
@Germy: Or, as Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in formatting and display of features.”
Germy
Below is the best random quote I’ve seen yet:
Germy
@BGinCHI: The only reason Arne got into Obama’s administration is because of his basketball skills. That’s how he bonded with Obama.
He looks and sounds like an idiot and his ideas are reprehensible. I think Obama is right in seeking a variety of viewpoints in his staff, but Emanuel and Arne were simply too horrible.
Germy
@BGinCHI: And the Buddha said “Stop wanting block quotes to look good; this is the way to enlightenment.”
Jon Marcus
No fan of Alvarez, but the article Tim links says that Servin should’ve been charged with 1st degree murder. If that would have been an appropriate charge for a guy firing into a crowd, how is it inappropriate for a uniformed cop repeated firing (and re-loading?) at a target lying on the ground?
Constance Reader
He started shooting less than 10 seconds after arriving. That’s premeditation.
NobodySpecial
IIRC, not only does the reloading qualify, so does the repeated shots while the victim was on the ground. That said, no jury of white people in Chicago will convict under the ‘he didn’t PLAN it’ defense.
Also, Alvarez deliberately mischarged both cases because that’s where her bread is buttered. Rahm is all about keeping the cops happy, from hiring a go-along chief who would cover their asses fulltime to authorizing any and all overtime to making sure to pad the judicial system with folks who wouldn’t feel out of place in Ferguson. Alvarez would never rock the boat. As the Joker would say, ‘this town needs an enema’.
NobodySpecial
@BGinCHI: Give him one for me, too. I don’t even live in Chicago and him fucking up the schools there has helped breed a shit ton of poorly educated men that gangbangers can prey on and recruit, which is part of the reason there’s a shit ton of crime in Chicago.
Anniecat45
A jury has a lot of options in this case. They do not have to convict on first degree murder or acquit of everything. A charge of first degree murder includes all lesser offenses, whether or not they are listed in the indictment/information/whatever Illinois uses as its charging document. A jury that did not buy first degree could decide it was second degree murder.
Howlin Wolfe
@Sherparick: Thank you! I’m a civil atty, so the echoes from a distant crim law class needed amplification.
boatboy_srq
@Patricia Kayden: Interesting that Alvarez is still there and McCarthy – who was hired away from Newark to deal with things like this – is gone. McCarthy may have played with the statistics a little, but the numbers were going the right way regardless; and the behavior of the PD follows the pattern from long before his arrival, which doesn’t implicate McCarthy personally so much as the entire PD as a whole.
@Jon Marcus: Servin definitely merited a voluntary homicide or 1st/2nd degree murder charge: he was off duty, he apparently didn’t roll up and immediately begin shooting, and his insistence that he was threatened seems to have borne precious little weight. Van Dyke, on the other hand, was on duty, was party to an arrest and simply pulled out his sidearm and started shooting: that doesn’t imply premeditation (i.e. he hadn’t sought out McDonald to kill him specifically), which makes 1st degree murder difficult, but it does imply a non-involuntary action (i.e. he didn’t shoot someone who was running across a range, or hit a jaywaker with his cruiser, etc). There’s an interesting take from Alvarez on Servin – almost as if she doesn’t understand the finer points of the potential charges:
Equally interesting is McCarthy’s perspective:
Barry
@Sherparick: “Unlike the involuntary manslaughter charge, where the judge thought the evidence pointed to the more serious crime not charged (voluntary manslaughter or second degree murder)…”
Wasn’t that the case where the judge ordered the jury to find the officer not guilty?
Now, just how often does a judge do that, under those grounds, for a non-connected person?
If you were charged with manslaughter, but it was clear that you had committed first-degree murder, do you think that the judge would order you to be found not guilty?
Omnes Omnibus
I am not licensed in IL but it appears that premeditation is not an element of 1st degree murder in IL. Also, it appears that IL law allows conviction on lesser included offenses without specifically charging them. I think this FP was rather ill-advised.
Big Picture Pathologist
@NickM:
Great observation!
Paul in KY
@Marshall: If you shoot a pistol into a crowd, ipso facto you have a desire to murder. Maybe not a specific individual, but anyone in the group that you fired into.
Paul in KY
@Jon Marcus: Agreed. You can form pre-meditation in a second.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Tim F.: That was my understanding – I’ve heard that it’s standard for 1st degree to include lesser included charges, but I’ve also heard that they *may* be excluded sometimes.
e.g.: if the prosecution claims the defendant egged on his brother to get him to pick up a gun, so he could shoot his brother and claim self defense, and everyone agrees that it does look kinda like self defense from all the physical evidence, then the charges might more reasonably be 1st degree, or nothing – other charges might be excluded because the prosecution can’t prove it wasn’t self defense otherwise.
I don’t know who gets to make this call – if the prosecutor gets to make it independently, and whether the judge can overrule.
It would be a fascinating dirty trick to play. “Hey, don’t blame *me*! I charged him with FIRST DEGREE MURDER! I’m the GOOD GUY! I can’t help it if the jury ignored the evidence! What? no, I’m not tipping a wink to the defendant, I have something in my eye.”
Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim
The Illinois statutes don’t mention premeditation. Just intent to kill or greatly harm, OR knowing that the actions taken (the ones that resulted in death, that is) could kill or cause great bodily harm. A note in Westlaw says, “In Illinois, premeditation is not an element of first-degree murder”, and refers to 848 F.Supp. 1379 (a federal case? Oh, I see. Defendant claimed Illinois didn’t prove planning, and the Fed court said they don’t have to.)
I’m not a lawyer, so I am not competent to say if this is still good law, but it looks like any funny business would have to be based elsewhere.