Courtroom 302

When he reflected on his career as a prosecutor, the one case that dimmed Judge Locallo’s mood was that of George Jones—a 19-year-old “tried for murder, rape, attempted murder, home invasion, and burglary in 1982” (151). Jones was eventually “cleared of all charges” (151). Later, Jones filed a civil suit against the Chicago Police Department and was awarded $801,000 in damages. An appeals court panel in 1988 ruled that detectives working on the case were determined to imprison Jones “regardless of the evidence” (151). Jones, an outstanding student and son of a Chicago police officer, was accused of raping and murdering 12-year-old Shelia Pointer and attempting to murder her 10-year-old brother, Purvy Pointer.

Officers arrested Jones based on Purvy Pointer’s whispering his first name when he emerged from a four-day-long coma. Jones lived near the Pointer family. When police learned this, they showed Pointer a photo of George Jones. Pointer cried at the sight of the photo and identified Jones as the man who came to his house. Detectives arrested Jones at his high school. Jones was then taken to Pointer’s bedside, where he was asked to identify Jones a second time. There was controversy over whether Pointer correctly identified Jones. At Jones’s trial, Pointer testified that he said “no” repeatedly to indicate that he didn’t recognize Jones. Then, when the detectives took off Jones’s glasses, Pointer claimed to recognize him as his attacker. The federal appeals court later ruled that Pointer’s identification of Jones was “worthless,” given that he was “a child with a severe head injury” (155). However, a “neighbor-witness” had also identified Jones in a line-up (155). 

At the Pointer home, Purvy Pointer’s mother found “two pairs of panty hose behind a radiator” that were not hers (155). They were knotted in a way that made it seem as though they were used as masks. Purvy Pointer recalled “two offenders, both of whom had worn stocking masks, and one of whom had had a gun” (155). “George,” he insisted, was the man who had “beaten him and his sister” (155). However, Pointer identified this attacker as “George Anderson”—“the leader of a gang that lurked near West Pullman Elementary School” (155). 

To his boss Commander Milton Deas, Detective Frank Laverty expressed doubts about Pointer’s interview and the validity of the charges against Jones. Laverty found it “very significant” that Pointer was now claiming that there were two attackers, and one of them didn’t match any description of Jones. Deas, however, didn’t find Laverty’s information “significant enough” to “reopen [the] investigation” (155). 

Two months later, Detective Laverty heard that a man named Lester Pigue confessed to killing a 21-year-old woman named Sharon Hudson three blocks from the Pointer house. Hudson had been “sexually assaulted and bludgeoned with a brick” (156). Pigue concocted a story in which he partly blamed Hudson’s murder on someone named “King George,” causing Laverty to think that this was the “George” to whom Pointer was referring. In Laverty’s mind, this meant that Pointer, with Pigue, might have committed the crime against his sister. 

In Chicago, detectives had long used a “double-filing system,” which included the official report that went to police headquarters and the detective’s “memos and handwritten notes,” which comprised a separate part of the file (157). Most of the precincts’ commanders allowed their detectives to determine what was “relevant.” However, many detectives refused to include any information that could assist the defendant at trial. The 1963 Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland required “prosecutors [to] disclose any evidence suggesting the defendant’s innocence” (158). Prosecutors, however, often lied when defense lawyers asked if all records were included. 

The detectives had, indeed, excluded information from their official report, including that, during their first interview with Pointer, the boy had mentioned that “the attacker was a gangbanger with lighter skin than his” and had initially offered no response when “asked if Jones was the offender” (158). 

During meetings with Purvy Pointer, Dan Locallo recalled thinking the boy was “very slow.” Pointer had an intellectual disability before the attack. The head injury only exacerbated his condition. 

Jones’s trial began before a jury on April 6, 1982; Judge William Cousins presided. Pointer testified on the second day. When Locallo questioned him, Pointer gave a detailed and clear account of what he experienced. He had a response for each of “Locallo’s 278 questions” (161). However, when the defense attorney Jeffrey Haas cross-examined Pointer, “[h]is memory quickly clouded” (161). To Haas, it seemed that Pointer’s recollection of the attack “was contrived” and “rehearsed” (162). It would have been easy for the police and prosecutors to manipulate Pointer’s knowledge of events, given his age, mental deficits, and head injury. The neurologist Harold Klawans testified during the trial and noted that Pointer “tended to perseverate” (163)—that is, he would respond to a question in a way that seemed appropriate but would repeat that response, even in moments in which it was no longer relevant. He concluded it was unlikely Pointer recalled the attack. It was, instead, common for such head injury victims to invent tales or to adopt stories they heard from others. 

The defense attorneys at the trial resented how, in their view, Locallo tried to manipulate the jury by provoking an emotional reaction from Pointer: He had shown the boy Shelia’s “bloodstained terry-cloth shirt” while Pointer was on the stand, knowing it would elicit a strong emotional reaction (164). Locallo was pleased by Pointer’s reaction; though, it didn’t help his case in the end. Meanwhile, Detective Laverty was shocked that the case went to trial, knowing what an unfit witness Pointer was. He came forward with the withheld information, including “a memo recounting a suggestion from Purvy’s father […] that the next-door neighbor might have been involved in the crime” (165). Ultimately, Judge Cousins declared a mistrial “with prejudice”—meaning that Jones could never be retried—on the basis of the withheld information (165). 

George Jones’s lawyers “filed a class-action suit in federal court” to end the practice of double-filing (165). The suit demanded the police turn over all information to prosecutors, including reports that could benefit a defendant’s case. The jury gave the large cash award to Jones as a message to police not to withhold information ever again.

The detectives on the Jones case had insisted that Jones was guilty and refused to let evidence stand in the way of convicting him. Ironically, the only detective investigated by the police department for his conduct was Detective Laverty, who “was accused of testifying for the defense without first notifying his bosses” (167). Laverty, however, was cleared of the charge because he had called Commander Deas before delivering his testimony. Still, his career as a detective was over. He was relegated to clerical tasks. The crime against the Pointer family remains unsolved. 

While Purvy Pointer was still in a coma, detectives interviewed a family friend named David Thomas, who found the kitchen screen that the attacker removed to enter the house from the alley. A lieutenant at the Area 2 precinct handling the case wondered how Thomas happened to be at the scene of the crime. Thomas had been a boyfriend of Shelia and Purvy Pointer’s aunt. Thomas had previous convictions, including one for sexual assault. The victim was a girlfriend’s daughter; she was 11 years old. 

Locallo later denied that any of his bosses notified him that a detective in the Pointer case had doubts about Jones’s guilt. Locallo says that the lesson he learned from the case was that one could not always accept at face value what the police said. On the other hand, he believed that the detectives truly believed in Jones’s guilt and denied reports that Jones suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of being incarcerated.