5:55 p.m. Trial ends for the day
5:34 p.m. Defense attorney questions whether David March placed the call
Defense attorney James McKay attacked on cross-examination an investigator for the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office who said he took a damning statement from McKay’s client, David March, following the shooting death of Laquan McDonald.
March is one of three Chicago police officers on trial for an alleged conspiracy to protect former Officer Jason Van Dyke after Van Dyke fatally shot McDonald on Oct. 20, 2014. On direct examination, Investigator Earl Briggs said March called him hours after the shooting and told him “the subject lunged at the officer with the knife.”
On cross-examination Tuesday afternoon, McKay tore into Briggs, repeatedly raising questions about whether March was truly the person on the other end of the telephone. He picked over Briggs’ report, noting that he sometimes put information in quotation marks to denote direct quotes. He noted that Briggs did not put “lunged” in quotation marks.
Still, Briggs insisted that March used the word “lunged.” And he later insisted, “I took a phone call from somebody who identified themselves to be Det. March.”
Briggs noted later that the person who called also gave the detective’s star number.
Read the rest here: https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/jason-van-dyke-laquan-mcdonald-police-cover-up-trial-murder/