Jury Convicts Chicago Police Officer of 2nd-degree Murder for On-Duty Shooting

A jury on Friday convicted Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke of second-degree murder in the 2014 shooting of teenager Laquan McDonald.

Van Dyke was charged with first degree-murder in the October 2014 killing, a charge that requires a finding that the shooting was unnecessary and unreasonable. The judge told jurors the second-degree charge was also available, requiring them to find Van Dyke believed his life was in danger but that the belief was unreasonable.

Jurors also convicted him of aggravated battery, but acquitted him of official misconduct. It's the first time in half a century that a Chicago police officer has been convicted of murder for an on-duty death.

McDonald was carrying a knife when Van Dyke fired 16 shots into the 17-year-old as he walked away from police.

Van Dyke was the first Chicago police officer to be charged with murder for an on-duty shooting in more than 50 years. That case, which also involved an officer shooting someone with a knife, ended in conviction in 1970.  (Q13 News, October 5, 2018)
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A police officer on the street has just seconds to make a decision, but a jury hearing a case will have days, weeks, or even months to review the evidence and make a determination as to whether the police officer's use of force was justified.

We recently saw a Lynnwood, WA civil settlement of $1.75-million in a police involved shooting.

On Friday (October 5, 2018), the city of Philadelphia also agreed to pay $1 million to the family of David Jones, a black man who was shot and killed by an on-duty white police officer last summer following a traffic stop in Northeast Philadelphia. The now former officer is facing murder charges.

And as we see with the above cases and in the Chicago case leading this blog post, juries are returning verdicts against police officers who shoot individuals who do not pose a clear and immediate danger to the officer or others in the area. An item of interest in these shooting (although not specifically identified as affecting the jury's decisions) is the number of times a police officer shoots a person. Police officers are often firing multiple shots (16 in the Chicago case) at individuals, giving the impression that the intent of the officer is to kill and not self-defense.

In November residents of Washington state will vote on I-940, which if passed into law will make it easier to prosecute police officers in Washington when / if they shoot someone in the performance of their duties. The question residents of Washington must ask themselves is should police officers be immune from murder charges, or subject to criminal prosecution for killing someone in the line of duty as we have just seen in Chicago.