Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, June 26, 2017.
Legal experts: It’s “no sure thing’”that Jason Van Dyke will be found guilty in Laquan McDonald case
Former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke could be found not guilty with first-degree murder for the 2014 shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, legal experts told the Sun-Times. Police dash-cam video captured Van Dyke shooting unarmed McDonald to death with 16 shots. “The case law is very clear; it says you have to base those decisions from the officer’s perspective, at night on the street . . . not at your office, at your desk,” attorney Terry Ekl, who has represented the family of a man fatally shot by Chicago police and cops accused of using excessive force, told the newspaper. The Supreme Court has ruled that juries must think of the incident from “the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene.” “As soon as the jurors hear an officer say they shot to ‘stop the threat’ and that’s the only reason why they (fired), and they cry on the stand, that carries a lot of weight,” Philip Stinson, a Bowling Green State University criminologist, said. “They just say ‘I’m just not going to second-guess the decision of an on-duty police officer in a split-second, life-or-death situation.'” [Sun-Times]
