The first and potentially most contentious trial in the high-profile mob beating deaths of two men after a van crash last summer on the South Side is moving forward with jury selection to begin Tuesday.
Lamont Motes, 20, will be the first of eight suspects to be tried in the fatal beating of Jack Moore, 62, and Anthony Stuckey, 49, after their van crashed into a group of women in the Oakland neighborhood.
The trial will begin less than six months after the crime–warp speed for the Criminal Courts Building, where attorneys in major cases are known to exchange motions for years in the pretrial equivalent of trench warfare.
The quick pace can be attributed to Motes’ defense attorney, Frank Himel, who has chosen to declare his side ready for trial in an effort to force Cook County prosecutors to proceed with what he believes is a weak case. The direct evidence against Motes, a one-time high school honor student who later attended DePaul University, amounts to nothing, Himel said at a court hearing last week.
“Not only is this case limping to the finish line,” he told Cook County Circuit Judge James Egan. “It’s limping to the gate.”
Motes faces life in prison if convicted. His is arguably the most problematic case for prosecutors.
Unlike some of his co-defendants, Motes has not made any statements to authorities implicating himself, and no physical evidence–such as blood from the victims on his shoes or clothing–has linked him to the beatings after the crash at 40th Street and Lake Park Avenue.
Aside from the statements of other defendants in the case, only three people–two women who saw the mob attack from across the street and 13 floors up in a CHA high-rise, and a jailhouse informant–have accused Motes of taking part in the fatal beatings July 30.
The man who may be the state’s best eyewitness to the vigilante beatings–an off-duty sheriff’s officer who tried to stop the attack–did not pick Motes out of a lineup. Prosecutors have repeatedly stood by their decision to level first-degree murder charges against Motes, but Himel has promised an aggressive defense.
“I know this case better than anyone outside of the people who were actually there,” Himel said. “And I know this kid–and he didn’t do it.
“They got some of the right guys here, but they also got one of the wrong guys.”
Prosecutors contend Motes was among the throng that reacted violently when Moore and Stuckey’s van struck the group of women sitting on a porch. One of the women was Motes’ sister, authorities said, and another–his cousin–was injured so badly she later died.
Motes was taken into custody after some of the suspects arrested at the scene named him, though none is now expected to testify against him.
Motes was an honor student and salutatorian at King High School in 2000, his family said, and his original goal was to be a teacher, before he went to DePaul and became interested in business administration. He left school after fathering a child, those who know him have said. He received probation after an arrest early last year for marijuana possession.
“He’d learned a lesson from that,” Larry Williams, the boyfriend of Motes’ mother, said of the arrest.
He had begun considering his life’s direction, according to his family, and had started participating in a local construction program. Motes had made a choice to try to return to college.
He has been jailed since the incident.
The porch the van struck is a gathering spot for the close-knit web of Motes’ family and friends who live in the neighborhood. Motes and his attorney have not argued that he was in the area at the time–just that he had nothing to do with the beating.
Members of Motes’ family have said Motes was at the corner of Lake Park Avenue and 40th Street on the evening of the beating, waiting for a ride from the girlfriend of his best friend. He was going to tell that friend’s mother that the girl was pregnant, according to his family. He was a block away when the van struck.
Motes immediately returned to the crash scene, his family has said, because his mother lives across the street and his toddler daughter was with her. Once he determined they were unharmed, he went to the hospital where the women had been taken, family members said. He was arrested early the next morning outside his sister’s home.
Expected to testify against Motes is Cheryle Britt, 34, who told prosecutors and a Cook County grand jury that she witnessed the mob beating from her 13th-floor apartment across the street. She was in the bathtub, she told the grand jury, when she heard a loud crash outside and told her children to see what had happened.
Her daughter returned to tell her what she saw.
“She said that `the car is on the porch, Mommy,'” Britt said, then was asked what she did next, according to grand jury transcripts. “I jumped out of the tub.”
Britt said she went to a window, saw about 50 people “swarming” the van and called police after her husband got her son disconnected from the Internet. She cursed as she watched a group beat Moore and Stuckey, she said.
“Now, did you know all these people by name?” she was asked by a prosecutor.
“I knew who they were related to and their faces,” she answered. Britt identified five of those charged, including Motes.
Himel has said he does not believe Britt could make accurate identifications from her vantage point and has told the court he may call her parents to testify about possible problems with Britt’s eyesight.
Prosecutors have said Britt has been relocated because of threats against her, while Himel contends she may have been moved out of her CHA building in exchange for helping the state.
Also expected to take the stand is the jailhouse informant, Eddie Lonnell Harkins, 23, who is awaiting trial for home invasion and attempted murder. He told the grand jury he was in a holding cell with Motes the day after the beating.
“[Motes] was like, `They ain’t got nothing on me because, see, they got all the other guys’ shoes and stuff because they got blood on their shoes,'” Harkins told the grand jury, according to documents. “`But, see, I ain’t got no blood on my shoes because I took my shoes and I burned them and I put on my black Air Force Ones.'”
Jailhouse informants are notoriously among the least reliable witnesses, and Himel calls Harkins’ testimony ridiculous.
Prosecutors told Judge Egan last week that no arrangement has been made in exchange for the testimony, but Himel points out that Harkins, who has a criminal record, is eligible for an extended prison term.
“No one could reasonably believe this person is testifying out of the goodness of his heart,” Himel said.
Assistant State’s Atty. Mercedes Luque-Rosales has insisted no promises have been made.
Himel also told the court last week he may call Tom Johnson, 40, an off-duty sheriff who was working a security job at a nearby building when the van crashed. Johnson told the grand jury he ran to the scene with a badge and his firearm.
He said he was attending to the injured when the mob began beating the first victim. Johnson yelled that he was a police officer and ordered the group to stop, he said, but they continued and dragged the second man from the van just a few feet from him.
Johnson said he saw seven or eight principal participants in the attack, and though he identified several suspects who were charged, he did not identify Motes.
Prosecutors, all the way up to Cook County State’s Atty. Richard Devine, have said they are comfortable with the level of proof against each suspect charged in the case.
