Laquan McDonald's juvenile record sought by lawyers of officer who shot him

Attorneys for a Chicago police officer facing first-degree murder charges in the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald want access to juvenile records detailing the teen's chaotic history as a state ward.

The move drew outrage from some child welfare advocates, but legal experts defended the action by Officer Jason Van Dyke's lawyers, saying the defense has a duty to pursue all possible evidence in preparation for trial.

Still, some lawyers doubted the judge presiding over Van Dyke's case would allow the defense at trial to delve into McDonald's troubled past.

The court-ordered release of a video showing Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times has caused a firestorm of controversy in Chicago and led to calls for major police reforms amid a U.S. Justice Department investigation of the Police Department's practices.

Cook County Judge Patricia Martin, who presides over the juvenile court's child protection division, will decide on the request by Van Dyke's lawyers for access to the court files.

The state's Juvenile Court Act governs who may review these typically confidential court files. The Tribune was granted access to read the voluminous records several months ago for a story on McDonald's tragic young life.

But it is rare for nonjournalists, particularly defendants in criminal cases, to seek access to another person's juvenile records, according to child welfare advocates. Just last month, however, a judge in Missouri allowed lawyers representing the city of Ferguson to inspect the juvenile records of Michael Brown, the black teen whose fatal shooting by a white police officer in August 2014 touched off riots and a national debate on police use of lethal force against minorities.

The judge overseeing a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Brown's family set strict rules for how information from Brown's juvenile history could be used. The teen's parents had opposed giving town lawyers any access to the records.

Attorneys for Van Dyke declined to comment about their reasons for seeking McDonald's juvenile records, saying the judge presiding over the officer's criminal case imposed a "gag order" preventing them from discussing the case publicly. In a written request filed last month, the attorneys said only that their inspection of the court files was necessary as they prepared to defend Van Dyke.

In the past, Daniel Herbert, the officer's lead attorney, has said Van Dyke feared for his safety and that of other officers when he opened fire at the knife-wielding teen that night in October 2014. At issue at trial will be whether that fear was reasonable.

The officer did not know anything about McDonald's background — including his name or age — before he opened fire.

But veteran criminal defense lawyers with no connection to the case said the judge still has the discretion to allow some of McDonald's history into evidence at trial if it is deemed relevant.

"When self-defense is properly raised, the defendant can present evidence of the victim's violent and aggressive prior behavior to support the defendant's version of events when there are conflicting accounts," said attorney Steven Greenberg. "The defendant does not have to have personal knowledge of these other incidents."

However, Terry Ekl, another longtime attorney, said it was a long shot for the defense to win the judge's approval to air McDonald's troubled past at trial.

"I don't fault them for looking under every rock to see if they can find something, but when you look at it objectively, I don't see how it would be admissible at trial," he said.

Kendall Marlowe, executive director of the National Association of Counsel for Children, a nonprofit based in the Denver area that works to improve the quality of legal representation of children, lashed out at the request as an attempt to shift blame onto the troubled slain teen.

"We keep child abuse records confidential to protect victims," he said. "Those records weren't created to serve the interests of perpetrators. For a defense attorney to mine the history of a child's victimization, to paint the child as a violent sociopath who deserved to die is the very definition of why these records should not be disclosed."

Bruce Boyer, a Loyola University clinical professor who directs the Civitas ChildLaw Clinic, called the defense effort a "fishing expedition" aimed at "knocking down doors to this boy's privacy rights."

"This case should turn on what happened on that street on the day Laquan died — what the officer knew, what he saw, and how he acted or reacted," Boyer said. "I'm trying to imagine a legitimate argument that a defense counsel would make that would explain why this history impacted the officer's conduct, and I just don't see it."

Police have said that McDonald, who had PCP in his system, ignored repeated commands over several minutes to stop walking and drop the knife after officers responded to complaints that the teen had broken into vehicles in a South Side trucking yard. Within seconds of arriving at the scene, Van Dyke opened fire, emptying his weapon.

More than a year passed before he was charged last November, hours before a judge ordered the release of police dashboard camera video that showed Van Dyke shoot McDonald as the teen walked briskly away from police with a knife in his hand.

The video contained no discernible audio but belied the written accounts of other officers at the scene that McDonald had lunged with the knife before Van Dyke opened fire.

Van Dyke, 38, has been suspended without pay. He has pleaded not guilty to the first-degree murder charges.

Herbert has argued that Van Dyke was overcharged for political reasons.

In an exclusive interview a few months ago, his wife told the Tribune her husband is traumatized that he took a life, especially of a boy who had just turned 17 weeks earlier. She and other supporters said the public perception of Van Dyke as a trigger-happy racist cop was unfair. This was his first shooting in 12 years patrolling many of the city's most violent neighborhoods.

The documents obtained by the Tribune in juvenile court files chronicled McDonald's difficult childhood as well as his arrests. He became a second-generation state ward at a young age when authorities twice took him into protective custody over allegations of abuse and neglect. He found stability in his great-grandmother's home, but McDonald grew into an often angry teen who embraced the drugs and gangs that saturated his West Side neighborhood, the records showed.

He had learning disabilities and was diagnosed with complex behavioral and mental health problems. He had three psychiatric hospitalizations by 13 as well as repeated school suspensions, expulsions, truancies and several drug possession arrests, according to the documents. McDonald was placed on long periods of probation, often with electronic monitoring, mandatory school, community service, mental health and other treatment services. When he violated probation or failed to show up for court, McDonald ended up back in a juvenile detention center.

Seven months before he died, while again locked up in a juvenile detention facility for drug possession, the teen told a court clinician he could not recall a single happy memory from his childhood, the court records said. McDonald said his life had been "hell," and he was ready for a change. In response to questions about his goals, McDonald said he wanted to go to college and become a nurse.