Dashonn Maggette
A wrongfully convicted man received a new judge and possibly a new trial after several articles in the Crusader that raised questions about an alleged cover up under former Cook County Circuit Court Associate Judge Lawrence T. Flood.
In a one-sided trial that favored prosecutors, the man, Dashonn Maggette 38, on June 30 was convicted as an armed habitual criminal and for the attempted murder of a police officer. He has yet to be sentenced, but there are talks of prosecutors are trying Maggette on three serious criminal charges where jurors were deadlocked.
But things remained uncertain after several Crusader articles raised concerns of a cover up allegedly orchestrated by Flood, prosecutors and two police officers with civil rights’ complaints on their records.
Months after the Crusader began writing about the case, Flood retired on September 29. He is a former Chicago police officer and an appointed judge who since 2017 kept a key document sealed from the media that reportedly clears Maggette.
A day before Flood retired after 22 years on the bench, Maggette was given a new judge for his case. He is Nicholas Kantas, a judge who served in traffic court at the Daley Center.
Maggette also learned that Karin Talwar, his public defender, filed a request for a new trial for his case.
Those efforts could save Maggette from spending the rest of his life behind bars. Maggette was accused of having a gun when he allegedly had a scuffle with Officers Patrick Forbes and Michael Hudson in a Chatham apartment building in 2017. Maggette and his relatives say those officers, who made statements that were different than those given to the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), are believed to have planted the gun on Maggette to get him charged and locked up in Cook County jail, where he spent six years without a trial.
After at least 80 continuances or delays, Maggette’s trial finally got underway June 26 after the Crusader began reporting on Maggette’s case last May. During the proceedings, Flood overruled Maggette’s public defender numerous times to the point where she was unable to present a strong defense before a 12-member jury that had just one Black person. Maggette requested but was denied a copy of the transcripts of the trial and a copy of the ballistic test report that Flood kept sealed from the Crusader, the media and the public.
After 11 witnesses and more than 16 hours of deliberations before the 4th of July weekend, Maggette was convicted on two of five felony charges. A partial mistrial was declared when jurors failed to convict Maggette of attempted murder of a police officer, aggravated battery with a firearm and aggravated discharge of a firearm at a police officer. So far, Maggette could get up to 30 years in prison after he was convicted of being an armed habitual criminal and the attempted murder of Officer Forbes.
But less than a week after the trial, the Crusader published a story about jury foreman Oscar Morales, a 20-year-old, who said the proceedings were a “cover-up” after reading several Crusader articles on the case. Morales suggested that Judge Flood pressured him and other jurors into coming to a verdict after two long days of deliberations.
In her 14-page motion for a new trial, Maggette’s public defender said she became aware of Morales’ confessions after reading the July 7 Crusader article.
“That article quoted Oscar Morales as having noticed that this Honorable Court was not allowing defense counsel to present evidence and that defense counsel’s objections were being overruled, while the prosecutor’s objections were being sustained,” Talwar said in her written motion for a new trial. Mr. Morales was quoted as saying, “I feel like the judge was leaning on the prosecution side [more] than the defendant. That’s my opinion . . . There was a part of me that felt like the judge was looking for a particular decision.”
On September 21, Talwar and her investigator, Marisa Figueroa, interviewed Oscar Morales, who “confirmed that he did in fact make those statements in the article and that he stood by those statements today.”
Morales, who asked the Crusader via text to keep him updated on the case, said it was a running joke among jurors that Flood would overrule Maggette’s attorney during the trial.
In her motion, Talwar said, Flood “showed hostility and prejudice against Mr. Maggette and defense counsel when it sustained objections made by the State when they did not have a legal Page 4 of 14 basis and when it overruled objections it should have granted when the objections were made by the defense.”
During the trial, Flood sided with prosecutors when they objected to the sound played from a cellphone video by a bystander who recorded the moments after the scuffle outside the apartment building. In her motion, Talwar said, “The audio was important to the defense’s theory by showing that Ofc. Forbes was continuing to use excessive force on Mr. Maggette, even after he was wounded, and that the bystanders were trying to calm the situation down. Witness testimony revealed that Ofc. Forbes was pointing the gun at Mr. Maggette as he was trying to get away from Ofc. Forbes and Mr. Maggette’s back was turned.
“This Honorable Court refused to allow defense counsel to impeach Ofc. Forbes and Ofc. Hudson by using the prior statements they made to IPRA/COPA Investigators and in doing so exhibited prejudice against Mr. Maggette and bias in favor of the State and the police officers.”
In her motion, Talwar said one of Judge Flood’s more “egregious examples” of siding with prosecutors [was] by allowing hearsay testimony from Detective Koch, who repeated questionable court statements made by Forbes.
