Amid rising allegations that innocent men are among those accused of the vigilante killings that followed a South Side van crash a week ago, Cook County’s top prosecutor on Tuesday stood by the charges filed against seven suspects in the mob attack.
Defense attorneys have said their clients were arrested in a blind police sweep for suspects, followed by a rush to charges under intense political pressure. The lawyer representing James Ousley, 31, said he will offer four witnesses at a court hearing Wednesday who are expected to say Ousley is wrongfully accused.
Cook County State’s Atty. Richard Devine said in an interview Tuesday that he is confident the case against the six men and one teen who have been charged will withstand such challenges.
“I can tell the city there were experienced police detectives on this case and experienced assistant state’s attorneys who work on a daily basis with witnesses giving information in cases, and there were people experienced in gathering physical evidence,” he said.
“In any case you’d like to have 10 eyewitnesses, half who are priests and half who are nuns, and all the bullets and DNA,” Devine said. “This is a situation where you have a lot of people at the scene and people seeing things from a lot of different viewpoints.”
The charges are bolstered by both witness statements and physical evidence, Devine said, adding there was no rush to bring charges.
“And from the start, our people were told to do it the right way, do it thoroughly, and make sure everyone is comfortable with the level of proof in each case. And if it wasn’t there, it wasn’t there,” he said.
Ousley’s defense lawyer, Sam Adam Jr., said he will offer two men and two women as witnesses at Wednesday’s bond hearing. Adam said Ousley walked up to the bloody scene of the wreck with the witnesses after those who killed Jack Moore and Anthony Stuckey had fled.
The four witnesses live near the site of the crash in the 3900 block of Lake Park Avenue. Three are friends of Ousley’s, Adam said Tuesday, and one is an acquaintance.
Ousley had been in the area all afternoon visiting friends and was more than a block away when Moore and Stuckey’s van went out of control and slammed into a stoop where a group had gathered. Three women were struck, including Shani Lawrence, 26, who died of her injuries Monday.
“They looked down the street, and they see a huge crowd of people gathering, so they head down themselves,” Adam said Tuesday. Moore, 62, and Stuckey, 49, whose funeral was held Tuesday, already had been beaten and pummeled to death with pieces of broken porch steps when Ousley and his friends arrived, the attorney contended.
Ousley then noticed his ex-girlfriend, Lawrence, injured and bleeding, Adam said. Ousley walked up, knelt and held her hand, the attorney said.
“He was trying to keep her up, saying, `Don’t go to sleep,'” Adam said.
The witnesses are expected to testify that police then arrived and cuffed Ousley when he wouldn’t leave Lawrence.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Adam said. “If he helped carry out this killing, does he stick around when the cops show up?”
Leaders of the state’s attorney’s office said they have expected differing witness accounts to surface.
“How many times do defense attorneys offer alibis in Criminal Court?” said Bernie Murray, chief of the criminal prosecutions bureau. “Sometimes there are findings of not guilty, and sometimes there aren’t.”
Rev. Al Sharpton on Tuesday joined local religious leaders in an emotional meeting with the family of Lawrence.
“Justice must be careful to prosecute the right people,” he said before meeting with the family. “But we should make it clear that we condemn this act.
“When you have a mob situation, you must always be careful” in pursuing charges, Sharpton said. “I’m not saying [police] are wrong. I’m saying they need to be cautious.”
Sharpton also said black leaders need to be consistent in their message to communities.
“We have to respond to mob violence even if it’s black on black.”
