‘Justice requires truth and reconciliation’: Mother of victim in Logan Square killing maintains rare outlook as son’s accused killer is granted new trial

Before her son’s accused killer was sentenced, Maria Pike had an extraordinary message for the judge who was about to hand down a punishment to Arcadio Davila.

Have mercy, Maria Pike asked Judge Nicholas Ford that day, even though Davila had been found guilty of fatally shooting her son, aspiring restaurateur Ricky Pike.

“For this son has a mother and this father has children,” Pike said of Davila. “Our society gains nothing by letting him die of old age in jail.”

On Tuesday, three years later, Davila was back in Cook County court. His conviction had been thrown out on appeal, starting his case over fresh in front of a new judge.

And while the prospect of starting the process all over again is stressful, Maria Pike told the Tribune, her outlook on justice and mercy has not changed. She believes Davila is guilty, yes, but the system should focus on rehabilitation and atonement — not revenge.

“There’s nothing that I do that is not in honor of (Ricky),” Pike told the Tribune on Tuesday. “I know that in order for me to have peace I have to seek justice, but the kind of justice that reflects us as humans, that seeks to understand each side. My side and their side.”

Davila, who despite cries for leniency had been sentenced to 80 years in prison, was granted a new trial in March when the state appellate court ruled jurors should not have seen certain portions of his videotaped interview with police. He attended a brief videoconferenced hearing Tuesday before Circuit Judge Diana Kenworthy.

After years of pretrial hearings, a jury found Davila guilty in the 2012 Logan Square shooting that killed Pike and wounded Pike’s friend Christopher Dear. Pike and Dear were not gang members, but Dear was unwittingly wearing a baseball cap associated with the Orchestra Albany gang, and prosecutors argued Davila shot them believing they were rivals.

Dear, the state’s key witness, testified at trial that Davila, whom he had known since grammar school, was the one who fired the shots. Davila maintained that he was asleep at home during the shooting.

Davila turned himself in not long after the shooting but was released soon afterward. He was arrested again some eight months later, and police conducted a lengthy videotaped interrogation, much of which jurors viewed at trial.

In questioning Davila, detectives talked about the strength of Dear’s eyewitness identification and noted their strong belief that Davila was the shooter. When jurors heard that, it improperly boosted prosecutors’ case, the appellate court ruled.

“Where, as here, a police officer repeatedly vouches for and enhances the credibility of the State’s single eyewitness and portion of the prosecution’s case, such conduct usurps the jury’s role in a manner that can be simply devastating,” they wrote.

And for some reason, jurors even saw parts of the interrogation video that the defense, prosecution and judge all agreed ahead of time should not be played at trial, the appellate court found. There is no apparent explanation for that discrepancy.

Pike said Tuesday she is hopeful that the pretrial process will not take another six or seven long years, like it did before Davila’s first trial.

“I’m just hoping that justice will prevail,” she said. “… I still believe that (Davila) is guilty and he should pay. He should pay for his worst mistake. But on the other hand, I do not seek revenge. I don’t want him (to spend) life in jail, and I want him to restore himself. Not for me, for his family.”

Pike said she feels for Davila’s family, and acknowledges that they have suffered.

“My son will never come back. Their son may. But I’m hoping not (because of) an injustice,” she said. “My hope would be that the criminal justice system gives more power to the families, in the sense that we should decide at what point in time whether atonement had taken place … We can work together, we can say ‘OK, this is what you did, now you are going to be paying for it. If you do this, this and this while you’re incarcerated, then I will vouch for you and ask for a shorter sentence.’ That’s what I would have liked.”

Recalling her address to Judge Ford in 2019, Pike said justice is far more complicated.

“Justice requires truth and reconciliation. And justice requires truly seeing each other and atoning for what we do,” she said. “When we seek justice it cannot be punitive. It cannot negate the humanity of others.”

mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com