Chicago City Attorney resigns after burying evidence in police shooting

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For four years, Officer Raoul Mosqueda offered the same account of the January night when he shot and killed a man during a traffic stop on Chicago’s South Side.

Mosqueda and his partner, Gildardo Sierra, heard over their police car radio that officers were looking for an Oldsmobile Aurora involved in a shooting. A gun could be inside the car, the dispatcher warned. They saw a similar vehicle and instructed it to pull over; then the officers approached the two men inside, guns drawn. There was a confrontation, the car backed up and began to drive away, and Mosqueda opened fire, killing driver Darius Pinex.

For four years, the evidence that could have verified or refuted that account — a recording of the dispatch from that night — was nowhere to be found. Attorneys for the city said the recording didn’t exist, even as a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by Pinex’s family went to trial.

Then, in late February, too late for attorneys for the Pinex family to adjust their case, it emerged that an attorney for the city had the recording after all but waited more than a week before telling the Pinex family. A federal jury ultimately found that Mosqueda and Sierra were justified in the shooting.

But on Monday, a federal judge ruled that the lawyer, senior attorney for the city Jordan Marsh, intentionally hid evidence that could have changed the outcome of the case. The Oldsmobile described by the dispatcher had a different temporary license plate number than the one driven by Pinex. And the dispatcher in the recording made no mention of a shooting or a gun in the vehicle — the reason Mosqueda gave for approaching the car with his gun drawn.

“After hiding that information, despite there being numerous times when the circumstances dictated he say something about it, Marsh said nothing and even made misleading statements to the Court when the issue arose,” U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang wrote, reversing the federal jury’s decision and calling for a new trial in the case brought by Pinex’s family.

Marsh resigned just hours later, according to the Associated Press.

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Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton — Chicago’s top legal officer who handles civil claims against the city — told the Chicago Tribune on Monday that the city is doubling down on its efforts to train lawyers on producing records. He also challenged the notion that there are widespread accountability or transparency problems in how the city deals with such cases.

“To say this is a practice, a systemic abuse or part of a coverup, there’s just no evidence of that,” Patton said. “There’s nothing in the ruling to support it.”

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