A judge has named Kane County State’s Attorney Joseph H. McMahon as the special prosecutor in the Laquan McDonald case.
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Judge Vincent Gaughan agreed in June to appoint a special prosecutor, after Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez recused herself from the case.
McDonald, who was reportedly high on drugs that night but was not armed, was shot in 2014 by Van Dyke several times as he walked down the street, the dash cam showing the officer firing without any apparent provocation. The jarring footage triggered weeks of protest in the nation’s third largest city and led the U.S. Justice Department to launch a civil rights investigation of the police department’s practices.
McMahon, who has been a lawyer for 24 years, was appointed to be Kane County state’s attorney in 2010 after his predecessor left to become a judge. Joe also worked as an Assistant Attorney General for the state of IL prosecuting white collar crime, public corruption and healthcare fraud. The embattled state’s attorney is leaving office in November, after losing re-election in March.
The city resisted releasing the dashcam video of the shooting for more than a year and did so only after a court ordered it to do so.
Van Dyke has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges.
Last week, another Cook County judge, LeRoy Martin Jr., appointed Patricia Brown Holmes, a former Cook County judge and assistant state’s attorney, to serve as a special prosecutor tasked with investigating the conduct of several other officers at the scene of the 2014 shooting of McDonald.
The planned 11 a.m. Friday release of videos related to last week’s fatal shooting by police of 18-year-old auto theft suspect Paul O’Neal would conform to a new city policy requiring the release of relevant video within 60 days of a police shooting.
A coalition of groups that had previously petitioned the court for a special prosecutor before Alvarez chose to step aside said they were not happy with the choice of McMahon.
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The judge announced McMahon’s appointment at a hearing on Thursday. She said it was the most responsible decision.
