Vol. 2, Issue 47: Chicago's Criminal Justice Playbook
The Issue: More Watts Convictions Overturned
Four more convictions have been vacated by Cook County prosecutors as part of a continuing review of cases related to disgraced former Sergeant Ronald Watts. This brings the total number of overturned convictions to eight, with dozens more under review.
Watts’ extortion ring in South Side Chicago Housing Authority projects—enforced by trumped-up arrests and supported by a systemic, top-down code of silence—was detailed by Jamie Kalven in The Intercept last year.
William Carter, 31, served four years in prison on three separate drug convictions that were thrown out last week. His attorneys argued that he was framed after he complained about Watts and his team.
Also exonerated was Bruce Powell, 50, who received a two-year sentence for drug possession after being arrested by members of Watts’ crew. After his sister filed a false arrest complaint, Watts was initially assigned to investigate the case; another supervisor later deemed the complaint unfounded.
“The code of silence and the failure to discipline allowed [the Watts team] to run roughshod,” said attorney Joel Flaxman, who represented Carter and Powell.
Meanwhile, prosecutors reportedly informed an attorney for Anthony McDaniels that they will oppose his petition for post-conviction relief. McDaniels is in the tenth year of a twelve-year sentence for gun possession; he claims that members of Watts’ team planted a gun on him after he refused to pay a bribe.
Earlier this year, Kalven detailed discrepancies between McDaniels’ account of his arrest and police reports in The Intercept. The gun McDaniels was charged with possessing was initially inventoried with a defaced serial number, but the weapon entered into evidence at trial had a legible serial number. Officer Kallat Mohammad testified that, following the arrest, he drove McDaniels’ car from a location several blocks from McDaniels’ home—where it had been abandoned after a chase—to the district station. However, a tow truck driver testified that he had picked up the car in front of McDaniels’ home and towed it to the police pound.
Mohammad was later convicted along with Watts for accepting $5,200 from a government informant they believed to be a drug courier.
GANG DATABASE AND IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
The ACLU joined immigrant rights groups in calling on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to strengthen the city’s Welcoming Ordinance by eliminating “carve-outs” that allow police to cooperate with federal immigration authorities in certain cases.
Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions signaled skepticism over legal arguments presented by Chicago, Cook County, and other local governments that maintain their sanctuary status complies with federal law.
Chicago’s Welcoming Ordinance bars police cooperation with federal immigration officials—except when individuals are listed in the police department’s gang database, have pending felony charges or prior convictions, or have outstanding arrest warrants.
The ACLU pointed out that more than half of the city’s 41,000 arrest warrants are over ten years old, many stemming not from criminal violations but from technical violations of parole and supervision. The organization also noted that the gang database is “notoriously inaccurate.”
Last week, a 25-year-old Gage Park resident sued the city and police department, alleging that he was seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a gang sweep due to his false listing in the Chicago Police Department’s gang database. Luis Vicente Pedrote-Salinas spent six months in a Texas detention center after federal agents raided his home in August 2011.
Columnist Mark Brown spoke with Pedrote-Salinas, who has lived in Chicago since the age of five and graduated from Kelly High School, where he participated in football and wrestling, avoided gangs, and “got good grades.” At 19, he was arrested with an unopened can of beer in his car. He spent a night in jail, and the charges were later dropped. However, according to his attorneys, he was added to the gang database “because he was a young Latino arrested in Latin Kings territory.”
Pedrote-Salinas applied twice for President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and was denied both times. His attorneys believe his inclusion in the CPD database was the reason for these denials. He now faces deportation.
“Individuals are included in the gang database without any notification by CPD, and then they are not allowed any opportunity to contest their inclusion,” attorney Vanessa del Valle of the MacArthur Justice Center told The Chicago Tribune. “Chicago cannot truly be a sanctuary city until CPD ends this practice.”
This is the second lawsuit filed by the MacArthur Justice Center this year challenging CPD’s gang database and its use in immigration enforcement.
PRESSURE FOR CONSENT DECREE CONTINUES
Former U.S. Attorney Zach Fardon reiterated his call for Chicago to “get that consent decree.” He noted that “CPD’s problems are deep and entrenched” and that decades of reform initiatives by local administrations “have never stuck.” Given the breadth of changes needed and the size of the department, “reform will take years,” he argued, emphasizing that “oversight has to be taken out of the context of local politics.”
Attorney Matt Topic, who filed the lawsuit that forced the release of the video of Laquan McDonald’s shooting, called on Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to either join the current lawsuit filed by community groups or initiate her own lawsuit seeking federal court oversight of police reform. He cited precedents from other states, noted that Madigan originally requested the federal investigation that led to an agreement to seek a consent decree, and pointed out that the state attorney general’s civil rights bureau has the resources to undertake the task.
NOT GUILTY PLEAS, NEW JUDGE IN LAQUAN MCDONALD COVER-UP CASE
Three Chicago police officers pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy, official misconduct, and obstruction of justice in connection with the 2014 fatal police shooting of Laquan McDonald.
In the same case, Special Prosecutor Patricia Brown Holmes requested a new judge after the controversial Judge Diane Cannon was assigned to preside.
EXCESSIVE FORCE LAWSUIT
A federal jury awarded more than $300,000 to Devonte James, ruling that Officer Matthew Bouch used excessive force when he struck James during a 2013 arrest. James was handcuffed at the time, and his jaw was broken in two places.
During the trial, an expert hired by the city “testified that striking a handcuffed subject was within the use-of-force guidelines taught at the Chicago Police Academy,” The Chicago Tribune reported.
LAWSUIT CHARGES FALSE PROSECUTION
Omar Williams, who spent six years in jail before being acquitted of murder charges last month, has sued the city and county, along with three Chicago police officers and one former prosecutor. He alleges that his prosecution was based on perjured statements, falsified police records, missing or destroyed evidence, and coerced eyewitness testimony.
JOHNSON SEEKS TO BLOCK HIRE IN HATE CRIMES CASE
Superintendent Eddie Johnson is asking a judge to block the hiring of a man as a probationary police officer due to his 2011 felony battery and hate crime charges in Carbondale.