CHICAGO _ The Illinois Supreme Court decided Tuesday in a 4-to-2 vote that it will not order a new sentencing for Jason Van Dyke, rejecting an unusual bid from prosecutors that could have meant a much harsher prison term for the former Chicago police officer.
The court's rejection means Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Special Prosecutor Joseph McMahon likely have exhausted their only legal avenue to stiffen Van Dyke's sentence of 6 } years in prison for Laquan McDonald's murder.
No explanation was given for the court's refusal to hear the case. But the decision fell largely along political lines, with the court's three Republicans _ Rita Garman, Robert Thomas, and Chief Justice Lloyd Karmeier _ joining together with Anne Burke, a Democrat who is married to Chicago Alderman Edward Burke, a onetime Chicago police officer who is facing federal corruption charges.
Two of the seven justices on the court, both Democrats, objected to the majority decision in full or in part, saying they believed Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan improperly relied on a dissenting court opinion when he sentenced Van Dyke for a second-degree murder conviction, not aggravated battery with a firearm.
"The trial court's actions here were clearly improper as a matter of law," wrote Justice Thomas Kilbride in his partial dissent.
In his full dissent, Justice P. Scott Neville Jr. wrote that the court opinion on which Gaughan based his sentence was "the opposite" of the prevailing state law.
Prosecutors "raise compelling questions that merit additional briefing, argument, and consideration by this court," Neville wrote. " ... This dispute clearly involves a matter of the utmost importance to the administration of justice."
Justice Mary Jane Theis, a Democrat, did not take part in the decision for unexplained reasons.
Chicago's two mayoral candidates, both African-American women, said the high court's decision pointed to racial inequalities in the criminal justice system.
Lori Lightfoot called the ruling "a sad reminder of the work we must do to create a system that is free of institutional racism and truly holds police accountable for their misconduct.
"We cannot build trust between police and communities they serve if officers who commit crimes are not held to the same standards as other defendants," she said in a statement.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle noted that Van Dyke was given 81 months in prison during the same week that a gunman in the high-profile slaying of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton was sentenced to 84 years in prison.
"And I think this speaks to the inherent inequities in our criminal justice system in ways that are tragic and devastating," she told reporters.
At an afternoon news conference, Attorney General Raoul, who interceded in the case because he believed that Gaughan's sentence was inconsistent with the law, declined to go so far as Lightfoot's or Preckwinkle's broader criticism or to say if politics played a part in Tuesday's decision.
While saying the justices in the majority weren't obligated to explain their decision, he hinted he would have preferred they did so, noting clarity that in a high-profile, controversial case such as Van Dyke's would have helped.
"I do believe this is a case that certainly the public wants to understand," he told reporters. "I think the public expects our Constitution and our laws to be applied, and the lack of explanation (from the court) leaves us questioning whether or not People v. Lee is the (guiding) law."
Raoul said the two dissenting judges who did explain their positions were clear that a trial judge cannot ignore Supreme Court precedent.
"I believe that's the law," he said. "And I got to believe that the other justices on the Supreme Court believe that's the law as well."
With prosecutors' hopes of stiffening Van Dyke's sentence dashed, the ex-officer's lawyers must decide whether they will continue to pursue an appeal of his conviction. The defense had initially shown no interest in an appeal until it said prosecutors forced their hand by challenging the sentence.
Attorney Jennifer Blagg, who is handling Van Dyke's appeal, said Tuesday she hopes to talk to the imprisoned Van Dyke soon to get his direction. But Blagg has previously made it clear that Van Dyke and his family did not want to go through another trial.
Meanwhile, Van Dyke's lead trial attorney, Daniel Herbert, said he hoped the state Supreme Court's decision "will strike a fatal blow to the political exploitation of the death of Laquan McDonald."
"Our judicial system may not be perfect," Herbert said in a statement. "However, the bedrock of the system maintains that all defendants, including unpopular ones, are entitled to fair and impartial treatment. Jason Van Dyke is prepared to serve his debt to society and move on with his life in a meaningful and productive manner."
When he sentenced Van Dyke, Gaughan quoted from a dissenting opinion in an Illinois Supreme Court ruling that governs which convictions should "merge" for purposes of sentencing when someone is found guilty of both murder and aggravated battery.
"Is it more serious for Laquan McDonald to be shot by a firearm or is it more serious for Laquan McDonald to be murdered by a firearm?" Gaughan asked from the bench. "Common sense comes to an easy answer on that in this specific case."
The majority opinion from the case quoted by Gaughan, however, concluded the opposite.
A Cook County jury convicted Van Dyke, 40, in October of one count of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery in the 2014 on-duty shooting of 17-year-old McDonald.
Due to security concerns, Van Dyke was recently transferred to a medium-security federal prison in Otisville, N.Y., an hour north of New York City. According to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons website, he's scheduled to be released on Feb. 8, 2022.
A petition filed last month by the special prosecutors and the Illinois attorney general's office argued that Gaughan improperly sentenced Van Dyke on only his second-degree murder conviction.
Illinois law actually makes aggravated battery with a firearm the more serious offense, carrying a maximum prison sentence of 30 years, compared to 20 years for second-degree murder, the petition noted.
The petition also sought to direct Gaughan to determine which of the 16 gunshot wounds caused "severe bodily injury" and sentence him to consecutive prison terms for those counts.
Prosecutors have argued that at least two of the shots caused extensive injuries, making Van Dyke eligible for a sentence of up to 18 years in prison: six years for each of those two wounds, plus six more years for the other 14 counts.
McMahon, the special prosecutor, had sought a prison term of 18 to 20 years for Van Dyke at his sentencing in January.
Van Dyke shot McDonald in October 2014 as the 17-year-old walked away from police on a Southwest Side street while holding a knife. Graphic police dashboard camera video of the shooting _ ordered released by a judge more than a year later _ sparked weeks of chaos and political upheaval, exacerbating the already fraught relationship between Chicago police and minority communities.
Van Dyke's monthlong jury trial last fall ended in a historic guilty verdict, making him the first Chicago police officer in half a century to be convicted of murder for an on-duty incident.
Kathy Supplitt, who was forewoman of the jury that convicted Van Dyke, said Tuesday she believed the state's high court made the right call.
"I know there are some who are disappointed in the length of the sentence, but Judge Gaughan has been involved in the criminal justice system for 45 years, so I trust and respect his decision, and I'm sure he thought long and hard about this."
"The activists were calling for 96 years to 'send a message' to CPD," she continued. "That would make (Van Dyke) a scapegoat for all the sins of the past. We all promised we would be fair and impartial, and to me that meant we were considering the evidence we heard during the trial only."
