Black Men Charged with murder, but they didn’t kill anyone—Chicago police did

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On July 8, 2012, as the summer sun rose over the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, police hauled a distraught 19-year-old named Tevin Louis away from a murder scene. The victim was Louis's best friend, Marquise Sampson. The shooter was a veteran police officer, Antonio Dicarlo.

For the previous five years, Louis and Sampson had been inseparable, drawn together by rough childhoods marked by foster care and poverty. In good times, Sampson made Louis laugh. In hard times, Louis made sure Sampson had food and a place to stay. As the boys became young men, they began to work the streets together, as they did everything, for better and for worse.

The day Sampson died, the pair had allegedly robbed a local gyros shop of approximately $1,250. Louis then ran from the restaurant. Sampson soon followed, then crossed paths with police.

After spotting Sampson running, Dicarlo and his partner gave chase, according to the Chicago Police Department's case report, pursuing the teen for a quarter mile as he ran to the block where he often stayed with Louis and his cousin. But Louis never saw his friend alive again.

Louis didn't arrive on the scene until after Dicarlo shot Sampson three times—in the shoulder, chest, and back, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's autopsy report. Louis attempted to cross the police line to be at his friend's side. He was promptly arrested for disorderly conduct and has been locked up ever since.

"Marquise was like a brother—like he came from my momma's womb," Louis told the Reader by phone from Lawrence Correctional Center in southern Illinois. "It was heartbreaking. I lost somebody I be with every day."

In a statement given to the Independent Police Review Authority, the agency that investigates police shootings and allegations of misconduct, Dicarlo described in detail the lead-up to Sampson's death, claiming the teen had pointed a weapon in his direction, prompting him to fire. That Dicarlo fatally shot Sampson is also acknowledged in Chicago Police Department reports.

Yet it's Louis whom the Cook County criminal justice system has held responsible. Following Louis's initial arrest, the charge of disorderly conduct evolved to include robbery and first-degree murder. In the subsequent months, he was found guilty of each.

Under a controversial legal doctrine known as the "felony murder rule," the teen's prosecution relied on a theory of accountability enshrined in Illinois's criminal code: that while committing a felony, a person can set in motion a chain of events that lead to the death of another person.

"I cried," Louis admitted, remembering the moment he learned that he was being charged with murder for his friend's death. "It was unreal. I didn't know what was happening."

But Louis's prosecution was no fluke. Rather, a Reader investigation finds that his case was one of at least ten in Cook County in the past five years in which killings by Chicago Police Department and Cook County sheriff's officers have resulted in felony murder charges for civilians. In particular, the Reader found three cases in which police fatally shot passengers in fleeing vehicles—an act that's come under intense scrutiny since the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Paul O'Neal in late July—before holding a surviving passenger responsible.

Although these prosecutions are sanctioned by Illinois law, these cases raise difficult questions about the law's use and impact—especially when felony murder charges stem from situations involving possible police misconduct.

At trial, Louis refused a plea deal on the murder charge. Presiding judge Jorge Alonso instructed the jury to consider Louis's murder and robbery charges as interdependent, explaining that under the law it's "immaterial whether the killing in such a case is intentional or accidental or conflicted by a third person."

The jury found Louis guilty. He's now serving a 32-year sentence for armed robbery and an additional 20-year sentence for Sampson's death. He's also appealing his case.

"I'm not perfect," he says. "But I don't deserve this."

While in prison, he had "Marquise 7-8-12" tattooed on one hand, and his best friend's birthday on the other.

And while Louis is serving time for his friend's murder, the officer who actually pulled the trigger has been commended for his actions. For fatally shooting Sampson, Dicarlo received a 2013 Superintendent's Award for Valor, which honors "an act of outstanding bravery or heroism," according to CPD. Mayor Rahm Emanuel presided over the ceremony.

CPD spokesman Anthony Guglielmi deferred to IPRA for comment on specific cases, although IPRA did not respond to three detailed interview requests. In a statement, Guglielmi said that "when wrong doing [sic] or intentional misconduct is discovered, CPD holds individuals accountable," and that the department's "commitment to the highest levels of integrity and the highest levels of professional standards is unwavering." Attempts to interview the individual officers named in this story, including Dicarlo, made through requests sent to personal e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and via CPD and the Fraternal Order of Police (the police union), yielded no response from the officers. The FOP didn't respond to other requests for comment, nor did the Cook County Sheriff's Office.

Based on Dicarlo's account, IPRA found the shooting of Sampson justified in February 2014, as it has in nearly all of the 238 closed shooting investigations detailed on the organization's website. In dashcam video obtained by the Reader via a Freedom of Information Act request, Dicarlo's encounter with Sampson is obscured, visible only through the windshields of a car parked between Dicarlo's police vehicle and the officer and suspect. Their interaction lasts just a few seconds before Sampson appears to collapse.

Dicarlo's 15-year career with CPD has been marred by at least 21 misconduct complaints, including four excessive force complaints, one of which alleged improper use of a weapon, according to documents obtained via FOIA request and from the Citizens Police Data Project. Misconduct complaints also accuse Dicarlo of conduct unbecoming an officer, unnecessary physical contact, illegal search, illegal arrest, and five separate instances of failure to provide service.

The city has settled at least two civil lawsuits against Dicarlo—for a total of $55,000—including one that alleged the officer had beaten a man so badly he was left bleeding from the head, that he then tried to convince fellow officers to forgo calling an ambulance, and then lied to a health-care provider about the cause of the man's injuries.

For his part, Louis doesn't believe his friend would have pulled his weapon on police.

"There's a difference between doing something wrong and just being fucking stupid," Louis says. "Marquise wasn't stupid. I think [Dicarlo] murdered him in cold blood."

THE FELONY MURDER RULE has its roots in English common law, under which all felonies were punishable by death, and any participant in a violent crime could be liable for a killing by an accomplice. Starting in the 19th century, most American states enacted laws imposing murder liability for killing in the course of the most serious felonies—robbery, rape, arson, and burglary. These laws didn't require intent, but in practice they were generally limited to cases in which one of the accused fatally attacked a victim with a weapon.

Today, almost every state has some form of felony murder liability. The laws vary as to which felonies can give rise to murder charges and how directly the arrestee must be involved in the death in order to be charged. Many felony murder laws—including those in California, Pennsylvania, and Maryland—contain a separate rule that requires the killer to be a participant or "agent" in the felony. Other states, such as New York and Kansas, have a "protected person" rule that prevents an arrestee from being liable for the death of a co-arrestee. [MORE]