For five days, a Cook County jury watched Chicago Police Officer Ella French die — over and over and over.
Assistant State’s Attorney Scott Clark had warned jurors in his opening remarks that the video would be difficult to watch.
A week later, the veteran prosecutor told them they could do something about it: Hold the accused shooter, 23-year-old Emonte Morgan, accountable.
“Today you’re going to have the last word about justice in this case, and that word should be ‘guilty,’” he said before the jury began deliberations late Tuesday afternoon.
Just 3 ½ hours after leaving the courtroom, they did, finding Morgan guilty of murdering French and attempting to kill her partners Carlos Yanez and Joshua Blas.
Morgan showed no reaction as the verdict was read, keeping the same stoic face as during the trial. His family could be heard softly crying.
None of the jurors looked at him as they returned to the courtroom. Morgan watched as the judge flipped through the verdict forms, the turning of the pages the only sound in the courtroom.
Morgan’s mother, Evalena Flores, mouthed that she loved him before he was taken away.
Outside the courtroom, a defiant Flores condemned the trial as unfair. “Justice was not served today,” she told reporters. “It’s not easy when there is evidence hidden. It was impossible for the jury to give my son a fair trial.
“This is a cover up, point blank, period,” she continued, without providing specifics. “And I do believe that my son will receive justice. I will not stop, I will continue to fight for my son’s justice.”
Meanwhile inside the courtroom, people in the gallery lined up to hug Ella French’s wounded partner, Carlos Yanez, and mother, Elizabeth French. The French family declined to comment afterwards.
Elizabeth French, center left, mother of Chicago Police Officer Ella French, holds hands with Ella’s police partner Carlos Yanez, center right, as they walk to the courtroom to hear the Emonte Morgan verdict on Tuesday. Morgan was found guilty on all counts in the murder of Chicago Police Officer Ella French.
Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times
Routine traffic stop
It was a warm summer night, just after 9 p.m. Aug. 7, 2021 when Ella French flipped on the blue lights of the police cruiser to pull over a Honda CRV she believed had an expired registration.
She and her two partners turned on their body-worn cameras and approached the car from both sides.
Morgan’s defense attorneys called it “a sliding doors moment” — a moment that changes your life instantly because you made one choice instead of another.
Emonte Morgan was in the back seat, where Yanez noted he had an open bottle of Hennessy on the floor. “We’re going to have you step out because I can see an open bottle of alcohol,” Yanez told the three occupants.
The officers are polite on the video, even apologizing for the hassle at one point. Ella French is seen patting down the driver, Emonte’ Morgan’s brother Eric Morgan. Blas and Yanez talk briefly with a young woman in the front seat, and with Emonte in the rear passenger seat on the driver’s side.
Yanez repeatedly asks Emonte Morgan to put away the phone and the drink he is holding, telling him he doesn’t want anything in his hands. Emonte Morgan argues and refuses to follow the officer’s commands.
“You’re doing too much,” Yanez tells him, and then he and Blas both try to take one of Emonte Morgan’s arms, leading him to move to the open front passenger door.
Eric Morgan takes off running, according to the video played in court, and Blas chases him.
Jurors then watched in apparent shock as Ella French rounds the back of the Honda to assist Yanez, seeing what she would have seen as her body camera recorded the final moments of her life.
Yanez is pressed tightly against Emonte Morgan, struggling to grab his right hand. There’s a scream and the soft pop of a .22-caliber Glock handgun.
The camera tilts upwards as French falls to the ground.
Yanez’s camera shows him also falling backward as he is shot several times and struggles to breathe.
Jurors also watched the chaotic scene from Blas’ perspective. When the officer heard the gunfire, he abandoned his pursuit of Eric Morgan and ran back to see if his partners were OK.
As he approached, Blas sees Emonte Morgan fire at him and then returns fire, striking Morgan in the arm and chest, prosecutors have said.
Emonte Morgan ran off and met his brother on a side street and handed over the gun before collapsing on a sidewalk from gunshot wounds, according to prosecutors.
His brother fled to a nearby backyard, where he was held by a man having a barbeque with relatives until police took him into custody. A gun was found along a fence, a bullet jammed in the ejector.
The defense
Defense attorneys maintained Emonte Morgan was just trying to drop the gun when it went off.
“The body worn camera footage, you’ve seen it, it happens fast,” Assistant Public Defender Jennifer Hodel said in her closing arguments.
“The state wants you to believe that what happened in the front of that Honda was intentional,” she said. “But you see in those photos that Emonte is on his chest in the car. He’s not lying on his back ... pointing a gun, aiming and shooting.
“It’s absolutely conceivable that during the struggle in the front of that car, someone’s finger was close enough to cause it to go off,” Hodel said.
But the harrowing footage from the officers sharply challenged that narrative.
In her closing arguments, Assistant State’s Attorney Emily Stevens froze a frame from one of the videos and reminded them they were seeing the last moments of Ella French’s life.
“Within seconds of that, this defendant took her life away,” Stevens said. “[Emonte Morgan] did nothing to help them. That’s intent.”
After the verdict was reached, Cook County State’s Atty. Kim Foxx told reporters that “we are incredibly gratified by the jury’s verdict today, but it is difficult to feel anything other than sadness about the senseless murder of a Chicago police officer killed in the line of duty who laid her life on the line.”
John Catanzara, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, called the verdict “a little justice for Ella, Carlos and Josh.”
“We can move on and focus on life after this now,” he added. “It’ll never be the same for Elizabeth, it’ll never be the same for the Yanez family or the Blas family, or this department.”
