Justice was not served in Laquan McDonald case

Laquan McDonald’s convicted executioner ought to feel the light of the warm sun on his back and the cool of the summer breeze upon his skin when the embalming fluid in Laquan’s body metamorphosizes into warm blood.

He should get out of jail when Laquan rises up from his cold grave and the cows come home. When the light of life once again fills Laquan’s brown eyes and the 16 entry wounds from the copper jacketed .9mm bullets Jason Van Dyke fired into his 17-year-old body that October night in 2014 are sutured by new warm unscarred flesh.

Van Dyke, the white ex-Chicago cop convicted of murdering the Chicago black boy and sentenced to short of seven years, got off easy. His sentence was, in a word, unjust. Point blank.

Period.

And the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision this week to dismiss a petition — by state Attorney General Kwame Raoul and special prosecutor, Attorney Joseph McMahon — seeking a new hearing for a lengthier sentence doesn’t do a damn thing to change that. Justice was not served.

It just is.

It just is the Chicago way — the American way. It is American hypocrisy, wrapped in a star-spangled red, white and blue cloak of liberty and justice for all. Except it is stitched with the fabric of racial hatred and injustice, which leaves black lives still lingering far from the shores of the American dream, which remains only a mirage.

It is American-sleight-of-hand-justice. Abracadabra justice. The kind of justice that fills American jails and prisons with a steady supply of black bodies funneled by a so-called American criminal justice system that disproportionately, unfairly, targets black men.

Black lives don’t matter. All day long we are counted as sheep led to the slaughter. And yet, we as black men are chief among the slayers — leaving a trail of young black men most often fatally shot by young black men in urban streets, filled with our blood and warm corpses.

Black lives don’t matter, in part, because they don’t matter to us. Truth. Damn.

It is pervasive — this hate of the black body. It is a hate rooted in America’s original sin called slavery. A 400-year hate that has maimed and murdered black folks since we arrived as slaves upon American shores in 1619.

It is the same insatiable bloodthirsty hate that fueled Red Summer of 1919 and the deadly attacks against blacks by whites across America. The same hate in 2019 that has now been ingrained in us, and which we now lethally execute upon ourselves.

We get angry when someone white kills someone black. But why have we come to accept the murder of our sons by our sons?

We can kill us but white folks can’t?

Insanity. Wake up!

I am as incensed by the murder of black folks by black folks as I am by the murder of a black boy by a white cop.

As I am by the murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. As I am by the murder of Emmett Till, though for none of these murders was anyone ever convicted. Laquan’s murderer was at least convicted.

Van Dyke’s time behind bars could have been up to 30 years for each count of aggravated battery alone — one count for each shot.

He got 81 months total. Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich got 14 years — and he didn’t kill anybody. He’s already served more time than Van Dyke will.

Van Dyke apparently will be free in just a few years. His sentence, in my eyes, is tainted.

Tainted?

Yeah. … ‘Tain’t nearly enough.

At least he’ll feel the sun again. But what about Laquan?

Email: Author@johnwfounatain.com