Oct. 20--A Cook County jury deliberated about three hours Monday before convicting the third and final defendant in the 2010 killing of off-duty Chicago police Officer Thomas Wortham IV.
Marcus Floyd faces mandatory life imprisonment after jurors found he knew Wortham was a cop.
Jurors found that prosecutors did not prove Floyd personally fired a gun but held he was still legally responsible for Wortham's killing because he joined his cousin in attempting to rob the off-duty officer. Jurors also found Floyd guilty of murder in connection with the death of his cousin, Brian Floyd, who was mortally wounded in a shootout with Wortham and his father, a retired cop who came to his son's rescue.
Wortham's parents did not show emotion, but his sister, Sandra, leaned forward in her seat, and her mother rubbed her back as a clerk read the verdicts. Floyd looked down and kept his eyes closed.
"I don't know the solution to the gun violence," the slain officer's father, Thomas Wortham III, told reporters after the verdict. "Something has to happen to stop all his shooting and killing. ... Something's awry in the thoughts of our young people today.
"I will always work to help change what's going on in this society for our kids for the rest of my life"
Earlier Monday, lawyers for Floyd tried to lay the entire blame on the cousin for Wortham's slaying outside his parents' longtime South Side residence.
The lawyers said Floyd never fired a gun that night, pointing to evidence that no weapon was found in his possession and that all the shell casings recovered at the scene had been tied to other guns.
Prosecutors have alleged that Floyd and his cousin attempted to rob Wortham of his new Yamaha motorcycle but that Wortham, just back from a second tour of duty in Iraq, opened fire and his father joined in. Marcus Floyd was severely wounded and claimed to have no memory of what happened that night.
In closing arguments Monday after four days of testimony, David McMahon, an assistant public defender representing Marcus Floyd, told jurors no witnesses heard the cousins announce a robbery before the shooting started. McMahon suggested the shooting may have started after a drunken Brian Floyd argued with Wortham after the off-duty officer asked him why he was in the area late at night.
Floyd's lawyer was trying to show that his client should not be held legally accountable for Wortham's killing.
McMahon emphasized to jurors that his client was shot through both armpits, apparently implying that Marcus Floyd's hands were up in the air as if he was surrendering.
"Justice has been done for Thomas Wortham. Brian Floyd is dead," McMahon said. "He's the one who shot and killed Thomas Wortham."
But Assistant State's Attorney Risa Lanier called the attorney's hypotheticals nothing more than "fantasy, fairy tales and supposition."
She told jurors that the moment Marcus Floyd got out of his cousin's car and walked up with him to rob Wortham he became legally accountable for the off-duty officer's murder.
"Let's get the gun out of the equation. Let's say there was no gun -- he's still guilty," she told jurors in her closing argument.
Marcus Floyd is the third defendant to go to trial for the slaying. Toyious Taylor, the driver of the getaway car, and Paris McGee, whom the elder Wortham said fired a shot at him before the two fled, were both convicted and sentenced in February to life in prison.
A separate Cook County jury decided in August that Marcus Floyd was mentally fit to stand trial despite his claims that he couldn't remember what happened that night. Floyd suffered "retrograde amnesia" when his brain was deprived of oxygen after losing massive amounts of blood, his attorneys contended. He also suffered two heart attacks and spent a week in a coma.
Floyd's lawyers made no mention of his alleged amnesia during opening statements last week, but on Monday McMahon noted that his client couldn't give his version of events that night.
Prosecutors said it didn't matter if Floyd had amnesia.
"Just because the defendant in this case may not remember what he did that night doesn't mean he didn't do it," Lanier said.
sschmadeke@tribpub.com
