Author: Dr. Michael Asken
By Tina Sfondeles Chicago Sun-Times
CHICAGO — A former Chicago cop has been convicted of trying to kill four police officers even though he was shot 28 times by police during a West Side traffic stop.
A jury Friday found Howard Morgan, 61, guilty on attempted murder charges — five years after a jury deadlocked on the same charges and acquitted him of others in connection with the 2005 incident.
The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police praised the verdict, declaring "justice served" on its website Friday.
But Morgan’s wife was outraged, and blasted the decision as "ludicrous" Saturday.
Howard Morgan, a Chicago Police veteran, was off-duty as a detective for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad when he was stopped for driving the wrong way on a one-way street near 19th Street and Lawndale in the early morning hours of Feb. 21, 2005. When police tried to arrest him, prosecutors said, he pulled out his service Glock 9mm and started shooting.
Morgan allegedly wounded one officer in the incident. But three other officers opened fired and hit Morgan 28 times, his wife, Rosalind Morgan, said.
Morgan spent seven months at Oak Forest Hospital recovering, she said.
In 2007, he was acquitted of charges of aggravated battery and discharging a weapon at a police officer. But the jury hung on the attempted murder charges, leading to his retrial.
Rosalind Morgan blasted her husband’s arrest and prosecution not only once, but twice, and said her husband "had never been in trouble, no prior arrests, no drugs, no alcohol.
"Four white officers and one black Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad police man with his weapon on him — around the corner from our home — and he just decided to go crazy? No. That’s ludicrous," she said.
To Rosalind Morgan, this whole thing is about racism.
"If they can do this and eliminate double jeopardy and your constitutional rights, then my God, I fear for every Afro-American — whether they be male or female — in this corrupt unjust system," she said.
Police have denied the arrest or shooting were improper.
Copyright 2012 Sun-Times Media, LLC
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