Video confession in Chicago girl's slaying sealed months after its public filing

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A woman carries a heart-shaped memorial into the Greater Harvest Baptist Church for the funeral of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton on Saturday, February 9, 2013, in Chicago, Illinois. Pendleton, who performed at President Obama's inauguration, was killed January 29 when a gunman fired on a group of students.

1/3 SLIDES © John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/MCT

A woman carries a heart-shaped memorial into the Greater Harvest Baptist Church for the funeral of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton on Saturday, February 9, 2013, in Chicago, Illinois. Pendleton, who performed at President Obama's inauguration, was killed January 29 when a gunman fired on a group of students.

In a windowless interview room in 2013, a pair of Chicago detectives predicted the future of the man they believed had killed Hadiya Pendleton."You are gonna go downstairs, and you are gonna go to county (jail)," one detective told Micheail Ward. "You're gonna get a public defender, and this case gonna last two or three years while you sit in (expletive) county jail."
More than four years later, Ward is still in Cook County Jail, awaiting trial after confessing he fired the shots that killed 15-year-old Hadiya - a slaying that attracted nationwide attention and became emblematic of Chicago's out-of-control gun violence.
On Monday, Ward's public defender will make a last-ditch attempt to prevent his video-recorded statement to police from being used as evidence, arguing that detectives improperly coerced the confession.
But in an unusual move, about a year after the Chicago Tribune laid out the details of the confession in a front-page story, Cook County prosecutors succeeded earlier this summer in sealing Ward's entire statement, resulting in its removal from a public court file.
The video and interview transcript provided a rare glimpse into how police elicit confessions in high-profile cases. Without physical evidence or a murder weapon, prosecutors are expected to lean heavily on Ward's statement to detectives.
The transcripts show the intense pressure felt by police to solve Hadiya's killing. While questioning Ward, detectives attempted to put that pressure back on the 18-year-old.
"But now people say we got to stop this violence because look, this little girl sang at the president's inauguration. One week she's at the president's house, the next week she's dead by her house," one detective said. "That's what makes this thing different."
Hadiya's shocking death came just a week after she had performed at festivities for President Barack Obama's second inauguration. With final exams completed, she and her fellow honor students were relaxing under a canopy at Harsh Park, about a mile from the Obamas' Kenwood home, when Ward fired shots into a group he mistook for rival gang members, prosecutors have said. Hadiya was fatally shot in the back, and two classmates were wounded.
Ward and another man, Kenneth Williams, were arrested about two weeks later. Williams, who is also awaiting trial on murder charges, did not speak to police after his arrest.
It was Williams, who prosecutors say was a higher-ranking member of a Gangster Disciples faction known as SUWU, who pressured Ward into opening fire that day, Ward told detectives.
Ward's confession during his 17 hours in the police interview room is detailed and at times emotional.
After the shooting, Ward told police, he drove to a friend's house and cried.
"I didn't want to do it. … I didn't want to do it at all," he told detectives at Area Central police headquarters.
At a court hearing in June, prosecutors argued to Judge Nicholas Ford that keeping Ward's interview in the public court file could prejudice potential jurors and endanger witnesses.
"I think if they were released to the general public, it would greatly impact both defendants' right to get a fair trial, as well as expose some of the state's witnesses to some unnecessary pretrial publicity," said Assistant State's Attorney Brian Holmes, apparently ignoring or overlooking the front-page Tribune article in June 2016.
It is somewhat rare for prosecutors to make such a request. It is far more common for defense attorneys to try to keep their clients' confessions suppressed or shielded.
But this time, it was the defense that had publicly filed the video-recorded confession in court records. And at the June 27 hearing, Ward's attorney, Assistant Public Defender Julie Koehler, objected strongly to removing Ward's interview from the public files.
"I think those videotapes obviously show that the police obviously coerced my client and used very aggressive tactics to get him to make a false confession," she told Ford. "I have no problem with anyone witnessing those videos."
Besides, Koehler said, "the cat is out of the bag on this" - an apparent reference to the Tribune story detailing the confession.
Ford, however, agreed with prosecutors, ordering Ward's statement sealed while citing his concern for a fair trial for both Ward and Williams.
This does not mark the first attempt by the defense to keep the prosecution from using Ward's statement against him at trial.
In arguing in March 2016 that police psychologically coerced Ward into talking, Koehler noted that Ward told detectives multiple times he didn't have anything to say.
But Ford declined to order prosecutors not to use the statement at trial, saying Ward knew what he was doing when he spoke to police.
On Monday, Koehler will make another attempt to suppress Ward's statement - this time with the expected testimony of an expert in coerced confessions.
As for the belated bid to seal the video-recorded confession, one legal expert said prosecutors may have timed the move as the case is getting closer to trial, though no date has been set.
Robert Loeb, a former Cook County prosecutor who teaches at DePaul University College of Law, said the public court files would be subject to increased media scrutiny for "eve of trial" stories.
"Those articles would then be very fresh in the minds of potential jurors," he said.
Four and a half years ago, detectives raised the prospect of a jury deciding his fate as they tried to obtain a confession from Ward, who was from a public housing building at 39th Street and Lake Park Avenue in the heart of SUWU gang territory.
"Those jury of your peers, they not gonna be off of 39th and Lake Park," one detective told him in the cramped interview room. "Most of these people are gonna be out from the suburbs, and those that hear about this nasty, nasty crime … they'll remember, oh my God, this is Hadiya's case. The president cried for Hadiya."
"Certainly ain't gonna be a jury of SUWU," another detective said.




Originally published on .https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/video-confession-in-chicago-girls-slaying-sealed-months-after-its-public-filing/ar-AAqNsG0