Special Prosecutor Requested in Laquan McDonald Case

Accusing Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez of being too close to the Chicago police union to effectively prosecute the cop who killed Laquan McDonald, a group of civil rights attorneys formally petitioned for a special prosecutor to press the case against Jason Van Dyke.

Van Dyke, 39, is charged with first-degree murder in the 2014 shooting death of McDonald, the 17-year-old who was shot 16 times on a South Side street. Van Dyke was the only Chicago police officer to fire his weapon, and he was about 10-12 feet away from the knife-wielding McDonald when he opened fire.

A Feb. 26 court hearing is scheduled to consider the petition.

Sheila Bedi, a clinical associate law professor at Northwestern University Law School and an attorney at the MacArthur Justice Center, contends Alvarez can’t be fair due to her close association with the Fraternal Order of Police, according to a Chicago Sun-Times report.

Alvarez has declined to request a special prosecutor and she’s refused to accede to demands she resign. Several elected officials, many of whom are backing one of her opponents in the March primary, have suggested Alvarez resign because she took more than a year to charge Van Dyke with murder, and only did so after the video recording of the shooting went public in November 2015.

• Related: Laquan McDonald Shooting Video

The question looms large in her bid for re-election. Alvarez faces a Democratic primary challenge from Kim Foxx and Donna Moore.

“I don’t believe any mistakes were made,” Alvarez told the Chicago Tribune editorial board earlier this month, adding that in retrospect she should have done more to inform the public an investigation was under way and that she had invited the Justice Department and the FBI to join the investigation a year earlier.