Nov. 21--Three secretly made recordings that cost an experienced Cook County prosecutor his job and could jeopardize a high-profile attempted murder case were played in court for the first time Friday.
The recordings were made by Talaina Cureton on her Motorola tablet in 2012 as she gave a statement at Area Two police headquarters the day after her son allegedly shot Chicago police tactical Officer Del Pearson, leaving him badly wounded.
Shortly after Pearson was shot in the chest, police found Cureton's son, Paris Sadler, in the basement of her South Side home and recovered a .38-caliber blue-steel revolver that was used in the shooting. Sadler's attorneys say Cureton didn't consent to the search of her home.
More than an hour of video was played in court Friday during a hearing over the defense motion to toss the search of Cureton's home. The video showed how a prosecutor and a police detective tried to direct the narrative of Cureton's statement. The video also flatly contradicted testimony by former Assistant State's Attorney Joseph Lattanzio, who said he took only one statement and that it had no corrections made to it.
Lattanzio was fired by State's Attorney Anita Alvarez in September after the recordings emerged. Alvarez announced at a news conference that she had referred the matter to the Illinois attorney general's office for possible criminal prosecution.
Lattanzio, who has not been charged with wrongdoing, appeared in court Friday, but Judge Thaddeus Wilson allowed him to delay his testimony until the recordings have been turned over to his attorney.
The recordings played in court show Lattanzio made well more than a dozen corrections to Cureton's statement, fixing the spellings of Cureton and her children's names, adjusting multiple details and excising entire sentences. Cureton testified that there were three statements, each handwritten by Lattanzio to reflect what Cureton said happened that night.
She testified that she hit the record button on her Motorola Xoom tablet after Lattanzio told her he was not representing her son. Cureton said she forgot about the recordings until August, when a friend who was in court told her Lattanzio testified he took only one statement that needed no corrections.
"I forgot about the tape until I heard he was lying on the stand," Cureton testified. "I'm like -- one statement?"
Cureton watched the videos --which she said showed her telling Lattanzio that she had told police she wanted to speak to her attorney before letting them search her house -- and realized they could have a huge impact on her son's case.
"I said, 'Bingo -- I have them,' " she testified Friday.
One video shows only the ceiling of the interview room. But other recordings capture Lattanzio's face and the handwritten statements. They show how the prosecutor and detective attempted to convince Cureton that she shouldn't note how a police supervisor on the scene told other officers to stop questioning her son.
"I don't mean to be anal about making you change it, but ..." she says on the video at one point.
But none of the videos played in court show Cureton saying that she had told police she wanted to speak to an attorney before allowing them into her home. Cureton testified that another video on the tablet not played in court captured her saying she wanted "legal representation" first.
Cureton also admitted that she signed a consent to search form that night but testified that she only signed it after police had already searched her house.
On one video, Cureton is interrupted as she says she told police she wanted to call her mother first. Cureton testified that she was trying to explain she wanted to call her mother for legal advice.
Lattanzio is heard in one video saying that Cureton is one of the smartest women he's met and that often gang members who come in to give statements just want to be done as soon as possible and leave.
When presented in court Friday with the statement Lattanzio filed in the case, Cureton said it wasn't the final statement she signed.
"This is something that somebody made up," she said.
sschmadeke@tribpub.com
