Judge Acquits Officers for Covering Up Laquan McDonald Murder

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February 2, 2019

By Michael Harriot, The Root

Again.

Two months after a jury found Officer Jason Van Dyke guilty of second-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, a judge decided that the police officers whose remarkably similar false accounts of the incident delayed justice for more than four years were not guilty of trying to cover up the murder, according to the Associate Press.

To be clear, the judge knew that former Detective David March, former Officer Joseph Walsh and Thomas Gaffney filed false reports that seemingly absolved Van Dyke of any wrongdoing. Everyone who saw the video, including other police officers who testified, agreed that the footage conclusively showed that the cops, charged with official misconduct, obstructing justice and conspiracy, had lied.

Associate Judge Domenica Stephenson disagreed.

Citing the fact that McDonald’s body moved while Van Dyke was pumping it full of bullets, Stephenson noted that the video contradicted the police reports but that she could find no evidence of a conspiracy in the prosecution’s “weak case.”

“The entire Cook County legal system (is) corrupt,” McDonald’s great uncle told reporters, according to the Tribune. “This judge had made up her mind … to make sure these officers never saw the inside of a jail”…

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