VAN DYKE JUROR: ‘LET’S DO THIS JOB’
Lone black panelist recalls process that led to historic conviction
When deliberations began in one of the biggest trials in Cook County history, juror Charlene Cooke says she was certain Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke was guilty of first-degree murder.
Gathered around the long cherry wood table in the nondescript jury room, Cooke was unable to erase the image from her head of Van Dyke continuing to fire as 17-year-old Laquan McDonald lay twitching on the pavement.
But not everyone agreed. After poring over key evidence and studying the legal instructions, the jury was close to signing off on convicting Van Dyke of second-degree murder when the judge suddenly allowed a recess for the night.
Sequestered at a suburban hotel, Cooke said she was thankful for the chance to “sleep on” the momentous decision but returned to the jury room the next morning comfortable it was the right move. When another juror
suddenly hesitated, though, Cooke says she grew upset.
The lone black juror on the 12-member panel, Cooke said she confronted the woman, who had grown emotional about Van Dyke and his family.
“Let’s not make this a race thing or a sympathy thing,” Cooke recalled telling her fellow juror, a white woman. “We’re talking about a man, not even a white man, but a man who used his authority the wrong way. He took somebody’s life, and it was overkill.”
Then, Cooke made it clear that she wasn’t backing down.
“I told everyone, ‘Kick your shoes off, get comfortable because we’re not going anywhere.’”
In the first in-depth, one-on-one interview with a juror since Van Dyke’s historic conviction, Cooke told the Chicago Tribune it was important to her to give the officer a fair trial, saying her preacher father raised her to keep an open mind about people and “look at the whole picture.”
“Everything is too much about black and white instead of right and wrong,” said the 60-year-old great-grandmother from the south suburbs.
Speaking on the four-year anniversary of McDonald’s death, Cooke said she had been surprised to be picked for the jury after she had made it quite clear while being questioned by the judge and lawyers that she was bothered by the 16 shots fired by Van Dyke.
Cooke, known during the trial only as Juror No. 245, spoke briefly to reporters on the day of the verdict along with several other jurors — all of whom remained anonymous as part of an interview tightly controlled by Cook County Circuit Judge Vincent Gaughan.
But for her interview with the Tribune, she agreed to go public with her identity and set no limitations on what she would discuss.
Among the highlights of the four-hour interview:
■ Cooke had to fight to control her emotions on the day prosecutors displayed graphic photos from McDonald’s autopsy on a large screen. McDonald suffered shots to his neck, chest, back, legs, arms, one hand — and bullet fragments were even pulled from his teeth. Cooke said she kept her composure, focusing on maintaining meticulous notes, as she did with each of the trial’s 44 witnesses.
■ She found Van Dyke’s tearful testimony rehearsed and unconvincing as he portrayed McDonald as far more menacing than what was shown on the infamous police dashboard camera video that captured the shooting.
■ Van Dyke’s comments to his partner on the way to the scene — “Oh, my God, we’re going to have to shoot the guy” — sealed his fate with the jury. “That was really a nail in his coffin,” she said.
■ Cooke said Officer Joseph McElligott, who trailed McDonald on foot for blocks while keeping his distance and waiting for a police car with a Taser to arrive, might have been justified had he shot the knifewielding teen after he attacked the police car driven by his partner.
‘Who shoots somebody 16 times?’
Cooke had already been selected as a juror, but the panel had not gathered as a whole when she said she inadvertently learned she was the lone black jury member while listening to the radio in her car. Heeding the judge’s instruction to avoid media coverage, she quickly switched the station off.
“I turned it off and thought, ‘Oh no, it’s just me. I’m the only one,’” said Cooke, a driver for FedEx.
Cooke did not know at the time that Van Dyke’s lawyers had initially tried to keep her off the jury after she said during the selection process that McDonald’s videorecorded shooting was “horrific.”
After Van Dyke’s lawyers objected to Cooke, prosecutors accused them of systematically removing black prospects from the jury.
A day earlier, the defense had bounced two other prospective black jurors. The judge rejected the prosecution claim, but he also declined the defense’s request to remove Cooke for “cause.” Yet Van Dyke’s lawyers chose not to use a discretionary strike to bounce Cooke.
Cooke called serving on Van Dyke’s jury the hardest task of her life. She recognized the sobering responsibility she faced and that many in the community viewed the landmark case as about race. She disagreed, however.
As the only black juror, Cooke said, she realized the focus could be on her, so she was determined to give Van Dyke a fair shake.
But the evidence didn’t turn as much on race as on the video showing an officer open fire on a troubled teen as he walked away from police while ignoring orders to drop the knife.
The jury’s guilty verdict on seconddegree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm — one for each bullet Van Dyke fired that night — marked the first such conviction in about 50 years for a Chicago police officer in an on-duty killing.
Cooke characterized the verdict as not as much a compromise for her as a realization over the course of deliberations that second-degree murder was more appropriate under the law because Van Dyke’s fear for his life was unreasonable.
“It was overkill. We all felt that from Day One of deliberations,” she said. “We all said, ‘Who shoots somebody 16 times?’”
Cooke said many of the jurors agreed that Van Dyke came off poorly on the witness stand because his testimony differed so dramatically from the video. “He wasn’t the victim. Laquan was the victim,” she said. “… I just didn’t buy it.”
‘Why me?’
Cooke said she has frequently been summoned for jury duty, but the Van Dyke trial marked the first time she had been picked.
When the latest jury duty notice arrived in the mail, though, Cooke said she tossed it in the trash because the date overlapped with her vacation plans.
The next notice drew her attention, though, because it warned she could be held in contempt of court if she didn’t show up at the Leighton Criminal Court Building. “I had no choice,” she said.
As she reported for jury duty on Sept. 5, Cooke said she didn’t really pay attention on her way in to the protesters for the Van Dyke case outside the courthouse.
For the next three hours, she sat in a crowded room with hundreds of prospective jurors filling out a lengthy questionnaire.
She had no idea it involved the Van Dyke trial until she returned a week later. She had seen the video years earlier on television, but Cooke said she had not kept up on the case or its immense political fallout.
On the second day of jury selection, she was the first in her group of 10 to be called back into the jury room, where a long table filled with lawyers, the judge and the accused police officer waited. She locked eyes with Van Dyke, 40, and was surprised at how young he looked.
“Part of me was saying I really don’t want to do this because you have someone’s life in your hands,” she told the Tribune. “I was wondering if I could be fair knowing (he fired) 16 times. You can bring a bear down with that number of shots.”
During the questioning, Cooke was upfront with Van Dyke’s lawyers about her concerns over how many times he shot McDonald. “I can’t lie about that,” she told the judge and lawyers. “… That’s a lot of shots.”
Even though she said she could be fair to the officer, Cooke walked back into the courtroom relieved, certain she would not be picked for the jury.
By morning’s end, lawyers had tapped three jurors, including Cooke.
“I’m like, ‘Out of all the people in the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago, why me?’”
‘Some menace to society’
Cooke said the camaraderie among jurors came easily.
During their three weeks together, they swapped stories about families, jobs, travel, politics, the Cubs’ season-ending loss — anything to pass the time because they weren’t allowed to talk about the evidence until deliberations. One member brought a cake to celebrate another juror’s birthday.
The jury was a diverse group with different economic and social backgrounds as well as residents from both the city and suburbs. She said they respected one another’s opinions and helped one another throughout the process.
“We had 12 different people with 12 different minds who came together and made one good decision,” Cooke said.
Besides her, four white women, three white men, three Hispanic women and one Asian man made up the jury. Five alternates, two of whom were black, also sat through the testimony but did not take part in the deliberations.
In the courtroom, Cooke said, she preferred special prosecutor Joseph McMahon’s workmanlike style over the defense’s “dramatic” interpretation of McDonald’s actions the night of the shooting in October 2014. Though race wasn’t an explicit part of the trial, the attorneys and some witnesses made occasional references.
In opening remarks to jurors, McMahon accused Van Dyke of shooting McDonald because he was “a black boy” who had the “audacity to ignore police.”
Cooke said one of the most difficult moments during the trial came when prosecutors displayed autopsy photos in the darkened courtroom.
The photos illustrated each bullet wound and how the 16 shots scorched his skin, shattered bones, tore through his lung and lodged in his abdomen. One final photo — a close-up of McDonald’s mouth — showed bullet fragments in his teeth.
It marked the only time, Cooke said, that she fought back tears. Had he lived, McDonald would have been the same age as her 21-year-old grandson.
It was clear to her that the parade of uniformed police officers who testified didn’t want to be there. She didn’t give much weight to comments from Van Dyke’s partner, Joseph Walsh, after she learned he was given immunity from further prosecution for his testimony. Walsh faces trial on charges he lied in police reports to exaggerate the threat posed by McDonald that night.
Cooke found McElligott — who testified he stayed a safe distance from McDonald, his weapon drawn while he waited for backup to arrive with a Taser — among the few believable officers on the witness stand.
“If he would have shot him, I would have said, ‘OK, I think this guy did feel threatened,’” she said. “… To me, he knew this was a kid that had a problem.”
Cooke said she was eager for the defense to begin presenting evidence that second week of testimony, but she didn’t find its case credible.
The defense’s pathologist held firm that McDonald was standing for most of the shots, belying what Cooke said she saw on the video. She described the defense’s animated video re-creation of the shooting as “cartoonish” and was unmoved by witnesses who told of a combative McDonald on the many occasions he was locked up in the county’s juvenile detention center.
As for Van Dyke’s testimony, Cooke found his tears forced. She said he “messed up” on the stand but also would have looked guilty had he not testified.
“It was a Catch-22,” she said. During closing arguments, Van Dyke’s attorney, Daniel Herbert, made Cooke bristle when he suggested the shooting could have been avoided if the teen had been wearing a Boy Scout uniform. She took the remark as racially suggestive.
“They wanted to act like (McDonald) was some menace to society,” she said. “He was a 17-year-old kid that did stupid things.”
‘Let’s do this job’
On the first day of deliberations, the jury dealt only with the question of murder, she said.
Each juror sitting at the long conference table took turns sharing his or her opinion. An initial straw vote showed most of them thought Van Dyke was guilty of murder, but the panel at that point had not distinguished between first- and second-degree. A few members were undecided.
When the jury voted specifically on the question of first-degree murder, only two jurors wrote “guilty” on the torn sheet of paper. One was Cooke. The other was a retired schoolteacher — a white man who during jury selection spoke openly about being gay and the efforts of his church to address racial injustice. He confirmed to the Tribune that Cooke’s recollection was accurate.
That first day, the jury studied Van Dyke’s testimony and the dashcam video, playing it at regular speed and in slow motion. They paused it and watched as Van Dyke stepped toward the teen as he opened fire.
Cooke said they voted about three times that day, consulting the complicated legal instructions repeatedly to try to better understand the difference between firstand second-degree murder.
“We were trying to come to a conclusion,” she said. “None of us wanted a hung jury. We agreed on that. We all felt he was guilty to a degree. But we couldn’t decide on first or second (degree) that first day.”
She said deliberations weren’t divisive. Late that afternoon, jurors were about to sign the verdict form for second-degree murder when Judge Gaughan allowed them to recess for the night. Gaughan had ordered they be sequestered once deliberations began. Jurors had been told the day before to pack a bag.
Cooke said she was startled by the level of security for the jurors. Their cellphones had been confiscated earlier in the day. Hours later, when they finally arrived at their hotel, armed deputies with police dogs searched the parking lot. They were kept from other hotel guests during dinner. The electrical cords to the televisions inside their rooms had been removed, and a deputy sat guard outside each of their doors throughout the night.
That next morning, back in the jury room, jurors reached consensus that they would not find Van Dyke guilty of firstdegree murder. Cooke said she had been hung up on Van Dyke’s statements before he arrived at the scene. To her, that showed premeditation.
But as she read the legal instructions again, she grew more certain that seconddegree murder was more appropriate because of Van Dyke’s role as an officer and his fear for his life — however unreasonable that might have seemed.
A Hispanic female juror — who during jury selection said she has applied to be a Chicago cop — helped her better understand the confusing legal instruction for second-degree murder, Cooke said.
The jury forewoman made sure Cooke felt comfortable with the decision and had nothing more to say.
“Are you sure, Char?” she recalled the woman asking her.
But the deliberations soon became heated, Cooke recalled, after one juror voiced concern about the impact of a guilty verdict on the officer and his family. Cooke had roomed with the woman the night before and was shocked at her sudden hesitation and tears.
“We got chosen,” she told the woman sharply. “Let’s do this job.”
Not much later, after huddling with the forewoman, the hesitant juror agreed to sign the verdict form for second-degree murder.
Their next vote on 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm would also not come easy, Cooke said, as jurors debated which shots killed McDonald. They eventually agreed it was impossible to tell for sure and unanimously convicted him on all the counts.
They acquitted Van Dyke, though, of official misconduct, reasoning that as a police officer he had the right to use his weapon.
After about 7 1⁄2 hours of deliberations, Cooke said she rang the doorbell in the jury room on Oct. 5 to announce the verdict. As the jurors passed the time waiting to be summoned back into the courtroom, Cooke said she and others watched from windows in the fifth-floor jury room as more news trucks arrived for the announcement.
Cooke tried to focus on the judge as the verdict was read, but she couldn’t help but look for Van Dyke’s reaction to the guilty verdict.
“He didn’t flinch,” she said. “He was just in another world.”
Right and wrong
Despite the outcome, this case has no winners, said Cooke, who feels sympathy for both sides, especially the slain teen’s relatives who have only a tombstone to visit.
“The McDonald family has a harder verdict because it’s a lifetime,” she said.
Since the trial, Cooke’s life is slowly returning to normal. She went back to work the next week and said she is often recognized along her FedEx route from her brief televised appearance following the verdict. The reaction has been positive, even from strangers, she said. Relatives from around the country have expressed pride.
Cooke didn’t tell her dad she was on the jury until after the trial for fear he and his preacher friends would spread the word “all over the world,” she quipped.
“I wish Mom was here, but I know she knows,” Cooke said of mother Nellie, who died five years ago. “I could hear her say, ‘My baby.’”
Cooke said she does not fear retaliation, but she has continued to stay at a trusted friend’s house since the verdict. She feels safer there for now.
She is proud of herself and her fellow jurors, convinced they reached the right verdict.
For Juror No. 245, the case boiled down to right and wrong.
And if the landmark verdict helps the city heal, she said, that’s all the better.