Court asked to resentence ex-officer

CHICAGO – Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and special prosecutor Joseph Mcmahon said Monday they are petitioning the state’s Supreme Court to order the resentencing of former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke in the shooting death of Laquan Mcdonald.

Van Dyke was sentenced last month to six years and nine months in prison for the murder of the black teen in 2014. But Mcdonald’s family and civil rights activists said the sentence was too lenient.

Van Dyke was convicted last year of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery.

“I determined that a mandamus action must be pursued in the Illinois Supreme Court,” Raoul said at a news conference.

Mcdonald’s great-uncle and several civil rights groups wrote to prosecutors last month to argue the sentencing violated a state law that says if a person is convicted of multiple offenses resulting from a single act, the court can impose a sentence only for the most serious offense and that the judge failed to do so.