Dashonn Maggette
A Chicago Crusader attorney has filed an emergency petition asking a Cook County Circuit Court Judge to unseal a key document in a case where two Chicago police officers are accused of framing a man who was wrongfully convicted in July after spending six years in jail without a trial.
The case involves Chicago police officers Patrick Forbes and Michael Hudson, who were involved in a scuffle with Dashonn Maggette, 38, in an apartment building in Chatham in 2017. Maggette at one point was put on life support but survived after suffering three gunshot wounds. Hudson was shot in the hand and was later treated and released. Hudson claimed that Maggette shot him with a 9MM semiautomatic gun, but so far there’s no clear evidence that supports his and Forbes’ claims. Months after the shooting, Judge Lawrence Flood sealed a ballistics test report from the media, after it allegedly ruled out that Maggette had a gun and fueled concerns that the officers planted the weapon on him.
Judge Flood, who served on the bench for 22 years, retired after the Crusader began reporting on the case. Flood was also a Chicago police officer who served 14 years on the force. After Flood retired in September, the case was transferred to newly appointed Judge Nicholas Kantas, who once presided over cases in traffic court.
Now, Kantas must decide whether to unseal a document in the case that allegedly was called a “cover-up” by a jury foreman, whose bombshell story in the Crusader forced Maggette’s attorney to request a mistrial. At the center of the case is a ballistics test report that no one outside the Leighton Criminal Courthouse knows about, including the Crusader.
But on December 4, at the request of a Crusader journalist, Attorney Charles Snowden filed a 16-page emergency petition, asking Judge Kantas to unseal the ballistics test report as part of the Crusader’s efforts in investigating the two police officers and a criminal justice system that suppressed a document that could clear a wrongfully convicted man.
In June, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) denied the Crusader’s Freedom of Information Act request for the ballistics report after Maggette told the newspaper his similar request was denied in 2022.
One month after the Crusader’s request was denied, Maggette was convicted of being an armed habitual criminal and of aggravated battery of a police officer. During the trial, Officers Forbes and Hudson gave statements that were different from those they gave to COPA. However, Judge Flood didn’t allow Karin Talwar, Maggette’s public defender, to cross-examine them. Only one of the 12 jurors was Black, and Talwar’s objections to the prosecutor’s questions and statements were overruled numerous times while Judge Flood allowed prosecutors to enter hearsay as evidence during the proceedings. Talwar at least three times asked Judge Flood to declare a mistrial, but her requests were denied.
Less than 24 hours after the verdict. Oscar Morales, the jury foreman, called the case a cover-up and suggested that Judge Flood rushed and pressured him and the other jurors to come up with a verdict in a trial that lasted just a week. Morales confirmed those statements to Talwar and prosecutors after he was summoned after the Crusader article was published.
Nearly six months after he was convicted, Maggette has yet to be sentenced. Talwar recently filed a motion for a mistrial. A hearing was scheduled for Monday, December 4, where Judge Kantas was expected to review the request, but he was in a training session as a new judge and the hearing was rescheduled to January 17.
That same morning, Attorney Snowden appeared in court, where he filed the petition and was prepared to argue his motion before Judge Kantas.
In the petition, Attorney Snowden argues that “the information sealed and withheld from the public is of particular interest to the public at large in that it demonstrates [the] conduct of the officers of the Chicago Police Department. The conduct, upon information and belief, is illegal conduct.”
The petition also says, “Upon information and belief, the unsealing of the evidence sought by the FOIA request from the Chicago Police Department will provide the general public, law enforcement greater insight as to whether the consent decree of 2019 is being complied with. It could also vindicate the Defendant if the evidence is as he says it is.”
Snowden in the petition also made several legal arguments that raised new questions of a cover-up after the document was sealed on August 1, 2017. The petition says there was “no hearing of any kind on the record” when the ballistics report was sealed. Citing several legal cases, the petition also noted that, “A closure order should articulate the privacy interest involved and be accompanied by a statement of reasons specific enough that a reviewing court can determine whether the closure was properly entered.”
Judge Flood’s order did not list any reasons for sealing the ballistics test report, and Snowden noted that even Judge Flood’s name on the order that “ordinarily bears the Judge’s signature is blacked-out, or redacted.”
The petition also says, “Upon information and belief, there were no fingerprint impressions on the firearm alleged to have been used by the defendant.
It is believed that Maggette’s DNA was on the gun, but there’s suspicion that the gun intentionally rubbed up against Maggette’s body as he scuffled with Officer Hudson. Maggette told the Crusader in June that he learned
from his public defender that the ballistics test report ruled out that he had a gun. But Maggette has yet to receive the sealed report.
It is illegal for attorneys and prosecutors to withhold documents that could clear defendants of crimes they are charged with committing. In the landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland, the High Court ruled that “the government’s withholding of evidence that is material to the determination of either guilt or punishment of a criminal defendant violates the defendant’s constitutional right to due process.”
The petition also says, “The Chicago Police Department has been under scrutiny of the United States Department of Justice since the Murder [of] Laquan McDonald and attempted cover-up and said murder on October 20, 2014. As a result of the Laquan McDonald murder, the Chicago Police Department and the city of Chicago have entered into a consent decree with the United States Department of Justice. The main complaint by the Department of Justice is excessive force. The Defendant believes that excessive force was used against him.”
