‘ MONDO BIZARRO’
Courthouse tale involving brothers a strange one— even by Cook County standards
Anthony Jackson’s journey through the criminal court system has been a family affair.
It’s also been one of the strangest ones in recent memory.
Jackson’s brother was the second- chair attorney at his murder trial 2 ½ years ago, in which Jackson was convicted of beating a man to death.
But then his fortunes changed.
His brother worked with his aunt — also an attorney — to argue that his lead defense lawyer drank during breaks at his trial and hadn’t even reviewed surveillance video of the beating until after the trial was underway.
That won him a new trial and a chance to clear his name.
Now, Jackson’s fortunes have changed again. With his second trial on the horizon, he is without a lawyer.
A few months after helping him win his second trial in 2015, Jackson’s aunt, veteran criminal attorney Gwen Anderson, dropped off his case, claiming there was “absolutely no cooperation” between her and her nephews.
And in a bizarre series of events last month, his brother George Jackson — a former federal prosecutor — was thrown off his case and fined $ 500 for contempt of court. George Jackson filed a pair of motions that accused Judge James Linn, the jurist presiding over his brother’s case, of colluding with prosecutors and referring to the Cook County criminal courthouse as a “puss- filled ( sic) cyst of dishonesty.”
Jackson’s behavior, and the allegations in the motions, were highly unusual, even in a courthouse known for its share of colorful characters and cases that expose the dark side of human nature.
And since then, the case has gotten even weirder.
‘ Mondo bizarro’
Allegations of corruption and unruly defendants are nothing new at the Leighton courthouse. But the florid language of the recent Jackson court filings stands out.
In one motion, George Jackson wrote an allegorical tale of fictional child rapist and drug dealer named Guy “Meatman” Black and liberal white Judge Lloyd “Let ’ Em Go” Lawrence.
Most of the 14- page motion is a hypothetical scenario in which the fictional prosecutors and judge conspire to convict Meatman in backroom conversations. The brief also seeks to have the court launch an investigation of the real- life Judge Linn and the state’s attorney’s office.
“Guy viciously, brutally and with the aid of enhancements, raped the daughter repeatedly and to the point of limp exhaustion,” George Jackson wrote at the start of a page- long description of the two vicious assaults by the make- believe “Meatman.”
One veteran defense attorney couldn’t believe it.
“I would call it ‘ mondo bizarro,’” said Joe “The Shark” Lopez, who read Jackson’s Meatman fable. “It reads more like a storybook than something you would file in court.”
In the other motion George Jackson filed seeking to have Linn removed from the case, he claimed he had been “traumatized” when Linn criticized his lawyering in open court and when Linn suggested there was “something wrong” with George Jackson during aMay 1 court date.
A week later, George Jackson said he overheard Linn discussing “DNA” evidence with Eric Sussman, a top deputy to State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. Linn, George Jackson said, shooed him out of his chambers, telling Jackson to “get your paranoid self out of my office.”
Though he couldn’t tell what case Linn and Sussman were discussing, George Jackson insisted the conversations were improper.
Sussman on Thursday told the Chicago Sun- Times that he and Linn had been discussing a closed case. Linn declined to comment.
Judge Dennis Porter, assigned to review the Jackson filings, dismissed both motions and stuck Jackson with the $ 500 fine. In his contempt order, Porter said the motions “are filled with scurrilous, frivolous and defamatory personal attacks” and “are replete with irrelevant and unfounded allegations.”
At a court hearing on May 24, Porter was more blunt. “It’s not what you said,” Porter said, looking down from the bench at the brothers Jackson. “It’s howyou said it.”
In his contempt order, Por-
“IWOULD CALL IT ‘ MONDO BIZARRO.’ IT READS MORE LIKE A STORYBOOK THAN SOMETHING YOU WOULD FILE IN COURT.” ATTORNEY JOE “THE SHARK” LOPEZ ( LEFT), on George Jackson’s 14- page “Meatman” motion