CHICAGO _ Clad in a bright yellow jail uniform and looking fatigued, Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke returned to the Leighton Criminal Court Building on Wednesday morning for the first time since his historic murder conviction for shooting Laquan McDonald 16 times.
The hearing dealt mainly with scheduling issues and ended in just a few minutes. No sentencing date was set.
The defense filed paperwork asking Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan to acquit Van Dyke despite the jury's verdict or to order a new trial. The judge, who presided over the three-week trial, scheduled arguments on those motions for mid-December.
An apparent miscommunication kept the news media from taking any video or photos of Van Dyke during the brief court appearance.
Van Dyke, 40, was taken into custody Oct. 5 just minutes after the eight-woman, four-man jury convicted him of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm.
The first Chicago police officer in half a century to be found guilty of murder for an on-duty shooting, he has been held in protective custody at a county jail in the Quad Cities area about three hours west of Chicago.
Van Dyke faces a minimum of six years in prison.
Van Dyke's lawyers have vowed an appeal over the judge's refusal to move the trial outside Cook County because of the extensive pretrial publicity.
At the landmark trial, Van Dyke broke from normal protocol for police officers facing charges of wrongdoing, opting to have a jury decide his fate instead of asking the judge to weigh the evidence in a bench trial. His decision to testify in his own defense also was a rare move, especially for one charged with murder.
The charges against Van Dyke centered on the now-infamous police dashboard camera video of the shooting on Oct. 20, 2014. The graphic images sparked protests and political upheaval and led to a sprawling federal civil rights probe into the systemic mistreatment of citizens by Chicago police, particularly in the city's minority communities.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors highlighted how other officers involved in the incident operated with restraint, content to let McDonald walk away while they waited for backup cops with a Taser to arrive at the scene. One officer, in fact, trailed McDonald on foot for about half a mile over several blocks, never threatening to shoot.
The video, played dozens of times for jurors, showed Van Dyke and his partner pulling up to the scene as McDonald walked south in the middle of Pulaski Road, holding a 3-inch folding knife. Both jumped out with their guns drawn.
Six seconds after Van Dyke exited the car, he took a step toward McDonald _ closing the distance to about 12 feet as the teen continued to walk at an angle away from him _ and opened fire. McDonald spun and fell to the pavement.
Van Dyke continued firing for at least 12 seconds while McDonald lay prone on the street, emptying all 16 rounds into him, prosecutors said.
Van Dyke told the jury that he was forced to make a split-second decision to shoot McDonald because the teen posed a threat and ignored commands to drop the knife.
But on cross-examination, he was unable to explain how he could have seen McDonald raise the knife moments before he opened fire when the video didn't show it.
"What I know now and what I thought at the time are two different things," Van Dyke testified.
