A senior city attorney in Chicago purposefully hid evidence in a trial concerning a fatal Chicago police shooting, ruled a federal judge Monday. Jordan Marsh, Senior Corporation Counsel in the mayor's office, resigned soon after the ruling.
The fatal shooting in question occurred in 2011, when Officers Raoul Mosqueda and Gildardo Sierra killed Darius Pinex during a traffic stop. A previous jury verdict found the killing justified. Yesterday, however, U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang ruled for that verdict to be overturned and ordered a new trial, due in part to Marsh intentionally hiding evidence. The Chicago Tribune reports:
"Both officers testified at the trial that they had pulled Pinex's Oldsmobile over because it matched a description they had heard over their police radios of a car wanted in connection with an earlier shooting…
[But a]ccording to court records, Sierra and Mosqueda did not hear the dispatch as they originally claimed because it aired over a different radio zone."
It was Marsh that intentionally failed to disclose evidence about the dispatch that the officers did hear.
From the Tribune:
"It wasn't until the middle of the trial that Marsh admitted — outside the presence of the jury — that he had failed to turn over a recording of the dispatch that actually went out over the officers' Zone 6 radios that night, a call that talked about a different Oldsmobile Aurora that didn't match Pinex's car and was not wanted in connection with a shooting."
The judge, U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang, also ruled that Marsh had lied about when he received the recording and his reasons for concealing it. From the Tribune:
"Marsh first said he had learned about the recording that day, then later said it had been the week before trial. When the judge pressed Marsh on why he hadn't disclosed the existence of the recording as soon as he learned of it from a police sergeant, the lawyer again backpedaled, saying it hadn't crossed his mind that it would be something that might be helpful to the plaintiffs."
"My thought process was, I want to see what is on that (recording)," he said. "You know in retrospect I think I should have, but I wanted to talk to the sergeant and to see whether it was even relevant."
But Judge Chang didn’t find Marsh’s story credible. He ordered that both the city and Marsh be sanctioned, and also ordered the city to pay Pinex's family's attorney's fees. The Tribune reports that the fees will cost the city hundreds of thousands, not including the cost of a potential retrial. Said Chang in his ruling:
"After hiding the information, despite there being numerous times when the circumstances dictated he say something about it, Marsh said nothing, and even made misleading statements to the court when the issue arose. That an experienced lawyer like Marsh did not even consider the possibility that this evidence might not go his way is unlikely to the extreme."
According to the Tribune, Chang blamed a lack of oversight and poor training for the Law Department's failure to disclose evidence and produce records.
"Attorneys who might be tempted to bury late-surfacing information need to know that, if discovered, any verdict they win will be forfeit and their clients will pay the price. They need to know it is not worth it."
The discovery is just more proof of corruption in Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration, where officials have withheld evidence and lied repeatedly to protect police officers even when they murder innocent civilians.