‘We Just Didn’t Buy It’: Jury Was Unswayed by Officer’s Story in Laquan McDonald Case

CHICAGO — Officer Jason Van Dyke asked 12 jurors to trust his memory, not a widely circulated dashboard camera video, to know what really happened the night he shot Laquan McDonald 16 times.

The jurors chose the video.

On Friday afternoon, after less than eight hours of deliberating, the jury convicted Van Dyke of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm in the death of Laquan, a black teenager who was carrying a knife but veering away from the police.

Most jurors stayed behind in the courtroom to speak to reporters after the verdict, as Van Dyke, who is white, was booked into jail. They said they found the officer’s description of the Oct. 20, 2014, shooting to be contradictory, overly rehearsed and simply not believable. And they called into question officers’ tried-and-true strategy of providing tearful testimony to overcome damaging video evidence when charged in a shooting.

“It seemed kind of like he was finally giving the play after they had been rehearsing with him for weeks,” said one juror, a white woman, who noticed Van Dyke “staring at us, trying to win our sympathy” when he testified.

“We just didn’t buy it,” said the juror, who like all the others declined to give her name.

Van Dyke’s trial was among the most closely watched in Chicago history. Busloads of police officers and state troopers braced for the chaos that many feared would have followed an acquittal.

But inside the jury deliberation room, the main debate was not about whether to acquit or convict. Instead, jurors were split on whether to find Van Dyke guilty of first-degree murder, which can lead to life in prison, or second-degree murder, which carries a far shorter sentence.

For almost three weeks, the jurors sat nearly expressionless in the courtroom as witness after witness described Laquan’s death. They watched the dashboard camera video dozens of times. They jotted down notes as pathologists and police officers testified. And as time went on, more of them became convinced that Van Dyke had broken the law.

For at least two jurors, the fact that Van Dyke stepped toward Laquan while shooting raised concerns. One juror said she was bothered by inconsistencies between Van Dyke’s initial statements and what the video showed. Another said he was alarmed by Van Dyke’s decision to open fire almost immediately after arriving.

“Instead of escalating the situation, he should have de-escalated it,” said that juror, a white man.

Still, not everyone on the jury was certain of Van Dyke’s guilt when closing arguments ended Thursday. The jury foreperson, a white woman, said an initial blind vote had seven jurors leaning toward guilty, two leaning toward not guilty and another three undecided.

Several hours of discussion that afternoon did not produce a consensus, and some jurors asked the judge for cigarette breaks to help them concentrate. On Thursday evening, a large convoy of sheriff’s deputies escorted the still-divided jurors to a local hotel, where they were sequestered.

The jurors said deliberations were cordial and productive. Initial disagreement over guilt and innocence on Thursday moved toward discussion the next morning about whether to convict on first- or second-degree murder. After about 2 1/2 hours of talks Friday, they opted for second-degree because they were convinced Van Dyke thought he was acting legally at the time, even though they determined the shooting was unlawful.

Many observers never expected this case to be decided by a jury, especially not one from Chicago’s Cook County, where police-community relations are strained and where outrage about Laquan’s death has reshaped local government.

During jury selection, each side accused the other of racial discrimination. Prosecutors said defense lawyers were unfairly excluding black people, including one woman who lived near Laquan’s neighborhood and whose son had recently been shot. Defense lawyers accused prosecutors of excluding white people, including one young man who was training to become a Chicago police officer. In a county that it is almost 25 percent black, and in a case in which race was central, only one African-American juror was seated.

Once testimony started, race was sometimes alluded to, but seldom discussed explicitly. The only black person on the jury, a FedEx truck driver, said she perceived racial overtones when defense lawyers suggested the shooting would have been unjustified had it been a Boy Scout instead of Laquan McDonald carrying the knife.

“I felt that was really inappropriate,” she said. “We’re past all of that. We didn’t come here because of race. We came here for right and wrong.” Over the course of the trial, jurors said they took pains to avoid following news of the case, sometimes even switching train cars on their commute to the courthouse if another passenger was reading a newspaper. One described the experience as being “hostages but VIPs at the same time.” Several jurors said they knew how important the case was to Chicago, but they did not allow that knowledge to sway their verdict.

“I wasn’t sleeping for three weeks,” the forewoman said. “I was thinking of it constantly, just because of its impact and because every day we walked in and looked at two families. We saw Jason Van Dyke’s family and we saw Laquan McDonald’s family.”

On the 16 aggravated battery counts — one for each bullet — some jurors initially believed that perhaps two of the shots were justified. In the end, jurors agreed that every shot was illegal. And on the final charge, official misconduct, they returned a not-guilty verdict because they said Van Dyke thought he was carrying out his duties that night.

To reach their decision, jurors said they relied on the video, watching it over and over again in the deliberation room. They were not swayed by Van Dyke’s testimony that Laquan targeted him with a menacing stare, made a threatening movement with a knife and tried to get up off the ground after being shot. None of those claims were backed by the video.

“He seemed scared on the stand,” said one juror, a white man. “He was fumbling around trying to remember things exactly how they were, and his memories and the facts and other evidence didn’t line up.”