CHICAGO — Federal authorities on Monday stated they won’t criminally cost Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago police officer convicted of homicide in the 2014 capturing death of Black teenager Laquan McDonald.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago stated in a news launch that the choice was made after consulting with the McDonald household and that the “family was in agreement not to pursue a second prosecution.”
According to the discharge, prosecuting Van Dyke on federal charges would have been way more troublesome than it was to prosecute him in state courtroom as a result of the burden of proof is way greater.
Federal prosecutors “would have to prove not only that Mr. Van Dyke acted with the deliberate and specific intent to do something the law forbids, but also that his actions were not the result of mistake, fear, negligence, or bad judgment,” the workplace defined in the discharge. “It requires federal prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt what Mr. Van Dyke was thinking when he used deadly force, and that he knew such force was excessive. ”
Van Dyke, who was captured on video capturing {the teenager} 16 occasions, was convicted in Chicago in 2018 of second-degree homicide and aggravated battery and sentenced to 81 months in state jail. The former officer served lower than half that sentence earlier than he was launched from jail in February.
Civil rights leaders, group activists, and others who had been indignant about what they noticed as a lenient sentence had known as for federal prosecutors to cost Van Dyke once more.
McDonald’s kin weren’t instantly accessible for remark Monday, however an aunt, Tanisha Hunter, denied to the Chicago Sun-Times that her household had been made conscious of federal prosecutors’ resolution to drop the case.
“I’m upset,” she told the newspaper. “That’s all I can say. How could they say that? We’re the one’s who should make that decision, not someone else. We’re talking about his momma, his grandma. That’s crazy.”
Other kin disagreed with the opportunity of federal charges.
After news broke earlier this yr that Van Dyke could be launched from jail, McDonald’s great-uncle, the Rev. Marvin Hunter, stated that whereas he thought Van Dyke ought to have obtained a for much longer sentence, he didn’t wish to see Van Dyke charged in federal courtroom.
“If you set this precedent of reconvicting people because you don’t think he got enough time, then hundreds of thousands of Black men in Illinois alone could be harmed,” Hunter stated on the time. “They will use this case as a way to keep them incarcerated. This is a back door to perpetuate slavery. We should be very careful of this kind of precedent.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office assertion Monday instructed one other prosecution wouldn’t fulfill critics and that even when Van Dyke had been convicted once more, a federal choose would contemplate elements such because the time he has already served and his good conduct behind bars that led to his early launch.
“Given these factors, there is a significant prospect that a second prosecution would diminish the important results already achieved,” it reads.
The workplace of U.S. Attorney John R. Lausch Jr. additionally identified that not solely will Van Dyke by no means be a police officer once more, his arrest and conviction — he was the primary Chicago police officer in half a century to be convicted for an on-duty capturing — led to a number of reforms.
Today, for instance, video of police shootings have to be launched inside 60 days; Chicago fought for months to forestall the discharge of police video displaying McDonald’s killing earlier than a choose ordered town to make it publicly accessible.
Also, Van Dyke’s identify was not made public till he was charged in McDonald’s death greater than a yr after the capturing. Today, whereas police nonetheless don’t launch an officer’s identify who hasn’t been charged, the company that opinions these capturing does.