Aug. 20--A Cook County jury deliberated a little more than an hour Thursday before deciding that a man charged with killing off-duty Chicago police Officer Thomas Wortham IV was mentally fit to stand trial despite his alleged amnesia.
The decision came after an unusual three-day hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building. Attorneys for Marcus Floyd had asked that a jury decide an issue usually reserved for a judge.
Judge Timothy Joyce set Floyd's trial for Oct. 13.
Floyd, who was severely wounded in a shootout with Wortham and the officer's father, 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.
With no available tests to prove or disprove whether Floyd had amnesia, the jury was asked to decide whether Floyd met the legal standard of mental fitness to stand trial -- if he was able to help his attorneys in his defense and if he understood the charges filed against him and basic elements of courtroom proceedings.
Prosecutors argued Thursday that Floyd easily met those requirements and noted that even the defense expert couldn't say that Floyd was unable to stand trial. They also asked jurors to discount a videotaped interview of Floyd in which he answered questions only after lengthy pauses, saying others who interviewed him in jail found his conversational abilities to be normal.
"It's not about his amnesia, folks. It's about what he can do in spite of it," said Assistant State's Attorney Risa Lanier. "He's not sitting in the Cook County Jail just staring at the walls and doesn't know what's going on."
But Floyd's attorney, Brian Walsh, an assistant public defender, said Floyd's "well-documented" amnesia left them unable to prepare a defense of what happened the night of the shooting based on his own account.
"This is not about guilt or innocence," he said. "It's about having a level playing field to meet the charges against him. Marcus doesn't have that opportunity because of his condition and because of the complexity of this case."
Assistant State's Attorney Mary Jo Murtaugh argued that even if Floyd has amnesia, it doesn't mean he can't stand trial.
"The fact that he claims to have amnesia for the murder doesn't matter," she said. "He's fit to stand trial. That's it."
Prosecutors have alleged that Wortham was fatally shot in 2010 as four men tried to rob him of his new motorcycle in front of his parents' home in the Chatham neighborhood. When Floyd and his cousin confronted Wortham, the off-duty officer drew his gun, identified himself as a cop and exchanged gunfire, according to testimony.
Wortham's father, Thomas III, a retired Chicago police sergeant, retrieved his service weapon and joined in the shootout. Floyd was severely wounded, and his cousin Brian Floyd was killed.
In dramatic testimony at a trial last November, the elder Wortham said that as he engaged in a shootout with the cousins, Paris McGee fired a shot at him from the fleeing getaway car. The elder Wortham said he grabbed his son's gun from the ground and fired both weapons at the car. Toyious Taylor, driving the car, struck Wortham's fallen son and dragged the body about a quarter of a mile down the street, he said.
McGee and Taylor were convicted and sentenced in February to mandatory life sentences.
The younger Wortham, 30, a three-year police veteran, had returned home a month earlier from a second tour of duty in Iraq with the Army.
sschmadeke@tribpub.com
