CHICAGO — Federal authorities said Monday they will not criminally charge Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago police officer convicted of murder in 2014 in the shooting death of black teenager Laquan McDonald.
The US Attorney’s Office in Chicago said in a news release that the decision was made after consultation with the McDonald family and that “the family agreed not to initiate a second prosecution.”
According to the release, prosecuting Van Dyke on federal charges would have been much more difficult than prosecuting him in state court because the burden of proof is so much higher.
Federal prosecutors “would have to prove not only that Mr. Van Dyke acted with the deliberate and specific intent to do something prohibited by law, but also that his actions were not the result of error, fear, negligence, or poor judgment.” said the prosecution. office explained in the statement. “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 that force was excessive. ”
Van Dyke, who was captured on video shooting the teenager 16 times, was convicted in Chicago in 2018 of second-degree murder and aggravated assault and sentenced to 81 months in state prison. The former officer served less than half of that sentence before he got out of jail in february.
Civil rights leaders, community activists and others who were angered by what they saw as a lenient sentence had asked federal prosecutors to indict Van Dyke again.
McDonald’s relatives were not immediately available for comment Monday, but an aunt, Tanisha Hunter, denied to the Chicago Sun-Times that his family had been informed of the decision by federal prosecutors to drop the case.
“I’m upset,” she told the newspaper. “It is all I can say. How could they say that? It is we who must make that decision, not someone else. We are talking about his mother, his grandmother. That’s crazy.
Other relatives disagreed with the possibility of federal charges.
After news broke earlier this year that Van Dyke would be released from prison, McDonald’s great-uncle, the Rev. Marvin Hunter, said that while he thought Van Dyke should have received a much longer sentence, he didn’t. he wanted to see Van Dyke charged. in federal court.
“If you set this precedent of re-convicting people because you don’t think you had enough time, then hundreds of thousands of black men in Illinois alone could be harmed,” Hunter said at 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 with these kinds of precedents.”
The statement from the US Attorney’s Office on Monday suggested that another prosecution would not satisfy critics and that even if Van Dyke were convicted again, a federal judge would consider factors such as the time he has already served and his good conduct behind bars leading to to his early release.
“Given these factors, there is a significant possibility that a second prosecution will lessen the important results already achieved,” it read.
The office of United States Attorney John R. Lausch Jr. also pointed out that not only Van Dyke Never be a police officer again.his arrest and conviction (he was the first Chicago police officer in half a century to be convicted of shooting while on duty) led to a series of reforms.
Today, for example, video of police shootings must be released within 60 days; Chicago struggled for months to prevent the publication of the police video showing the murder of McDonald’s before a judge ordered the city to make it available to the public.
Additionally, Van Dyke’s name was not made public until he was charged in the McDonald’s death more than a year after the shooting. Today, although the police have not yet released the name of an officer who has not been charged, the agency that reviews those shootings does.
Reference-www.nbcnews.com