A former Chicago police officer was released from prison in Chicago, Illinois, on Thursday after serving just under half his sentence for killing black teenager Laquan McDonald.
Jason Van Dyke was released on good behavior, meaning he will have served just over three years behind bars following his 2019 conviction. The seven-year sentence, the first time a police officer was found guilty for a shooting while in the line of duty in Chicago in 50 years, was considered light for one count of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm.
Prosecutors initially asked for 18-20 years for the crime, but they were satisfied to earn a rare conviction.
“When I think back what my reaction was in 2019 when this sentence was handed down, [it] was, ‘Wow.’ I understand the sentence that was imposed is less than what a lot of people wanted. It’s less than what I asked for, [and] it’s less than what I thought was appropriate. [But] this was a successful prosecution,” special prosecutor Joe McMahon, who led the prosecution, told CNN, noting a murder conviction for an officer was “incredibly rare.”
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McDonald’s great uncle Rev. Marvin Hunter also praised the conviction but said the sentence did not go as far as hoped.
“We never asked for revenge, we asked for justice. And in the case of Jason Van Dyke, we feel we got justice because he got prosecuted for the crime that he did,” Hunter told the outlet. “He did not do the amount of time that we felt like he should have done, but he did get prosecuted.”
Hunter said he felt the court did not take McDonald’s suffering into consideration but instead tried to meet in the middle by sentencing him at all.
“That is not how the justice system in this country was designed to be,” he said. “If you’re wrong, you should pay for what you’ve done.”
In a statement Thursday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she was disappointed in the light sentence and Van Dyke’s early release.
“I understand why this continues to feel like a miscarriage of justice, especially when many black and brown men get sentenced to so much more prison time for having committed far lesser crimes,” Lightfoot said. “It’s these distortions in the criminal justice system, historically, that have made it so hard to build trust.”
Video footage of the Oct. 20, 2014, shooting showed Van Dyke shot 17-year-old McDonald 16 times in the back while McDonald was walking away. The video footage was the key evidence in convicting Van Dyke, who claimed McDonald pointed a knife at him.
The shooting triggered massive protests and led to an investigation from the Justice Department that revealed Chicago police often used excessive force on minorities, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Discussions have swirled about federal charges against Van Dyke, with the NAACP writing a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting a commitment to federal charges.
But Hunter warned doing so could set a dangerous precedent that would harm the black community.
“If they are successful at Mr. Van Dyke being charged at the federal level, it’ll set a precedent in this country for hundreds and thousands of black men that are still in prison, some of whom are innocent, that whenever they do their time … they could use it to reprosecute them and keep them there,” Hunter said.
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Van Dyke’s conviction led to reform in the Chicago police department, including the creation of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which conducts civilian oversight of CPD, Lightfoot said.
The former officer’s attorney said Van Dyke, a private person who wants to spend time with his family, won’t be making a statement.
