By Steve Schmadeke
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — What once seemed like an ironclad case against the man charged with shooting a Chicago police officer in 2012 appears to be developing cracks.
Shortly after Officer Del Pearson was shot in the chest, police found the suspect in the basement of his mother’s South Side home and recovered a .38-caliber blue-steel revolver and a sweaty black T-shirt — both later linked to the shooting.
But attorneys for Paris Sadler are challenging the constitutionality of the search, arguing that officers, upset over a colleague’s shooting, did “sloppy” work.
And during a hearing that went late into the evening Thursday, Cook County Circuit Judge Thaddeus Wilson raised serious concerns about the search and a statement that prosecutors said had been given by Sadler’s mother, Talaina Cureton.
Although he has not ruled on the defense motion to quash the arrest and suppress the evidence found in the house, Wilson made it clear that he believed Cureton’s testimony that called into question whether prosecutors had produced in court her real statement. She said hers contained corrections and edits marked on the statement and included the detail that she had asked to speak to an attorney. Yet the one presented in court did not have that detail or any corrections or edits.
Prosecutors insisted no other statement existed, but Wilson said he had never seen a statement without corrections or edits in his 20 years as a judge or lawyer.
“I believe (Cureton’s) testimony that there was another handwritten statement that she made corrections and edits to,” the judge said in court. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen any statement taken by an assistant state’s attorney ... where it is perfect with no edits or corrections.”
Wilson said prosecutors often make the corrections to fix grammatical mistakes. Witnesses or defendants then initial each correction, signaling their approval.
The judge suggested the state’s attorney’s office intentionally made grammatical mistakes — so that corrections have to be handwritten in — to try to give credibility that the witness or defendant read the statement and understood what was written. He called the corrections “built-in.”
But Assistant State’s Attorney Joseph Lattanzio, the prosecutor who took Cureton’s statement, denied any such practice.
“It’s not ethical,” he said. “I would never do it. I’d quit if I got trained that way.”
Lattanzio also testified that he took only one statement from Cureton the day after her son’s arrest and that she never told him she had asked police to speak to an attorney.
Prosecutors tried to introduce seven other statements taken by Lattanzio in unrelated cases — none had corrections marked on them. But the judge said the request came too late in the proceedings.
In a front-page article in 2012, the Tribune recounted Pearson’s close call. The veteran South Chicago District tactical officer lost a massive amount of blood after being shot in the chest during an overnight shift. He survived thanks to fast work by first responders, the skill of trauma surgeons and luck.
Prosecutors have said Pearson was responding to a call of a “juvenile disturbance” in the 8400 block of South Kingston Avenue when he saw Sadler clutch his waistband — a possible sign he was carrying a gun. He took off running, they said.
As Pearson chased Sadler, the younger man turned and shot the officer twice, charges allege. One bullet tore through an artery in Pearson’s upper shoulder, but the second lodged in his bulletproof vest.
Sadler’s attorneys allege that another officer has given differing accounts of how an informant tipped him off to the suspect being Sadler. In one version, he said he called the informant, gave him a general description of the suspect and the informant told him it sounded like Sadler. In the other version, the officer said the informant called him first.
Several officers went to Sadler’s home to check out the tip. One of the officers knew Sadler’s mother because his wife had gone to high school with her, Sadler’s lawyers said in court.
Prosecutors said Cureton, awakened by the shots outside, signed a consent form allowing officers to search her residence.
Prosecutors said Sadler, who lived in the basement, was wearing only shorts and “sweating buckets,” making the officers suspicious. They searched the basement and found a Colt Cobra .38-caliber revolver in a wall behind a bathtub. A ballistics expert later matched the gun to Pearson’s shooting.
After a black T-shirt was found, a sergeant halted the search and instructed officers to obtain a search warrant.
But Cureton said she asked the officer she knew if she needed a lawyer and then turned away for a moment. The officers walked in uninvited, she said.
Cureton alleged that officers coerced her into signing the form allowing the search, while her attorneys argued that even if she consented to the search, police need Sadler’s permission since his basement residence had a separate entrance.
Sadler’s attorney, Ashley Shambley, said it was clear from records and testimony that the officers’ “emotions were running high” and they got it backward, arresting Sadler before obtaining a search warrant.
“They did sloppy police work,” he said. “They jumped the gun.”
But prosecutors said Cureton is lying now to try to save her son.
“She didn’t know her knucklehead son had a pistol downstairs that had been used to shoot a policeman,” Assistant State’s Attorney Dan Groth told the judge.
Copyright 2015 the Chicago Tribune