In rare triple jury trial, prosecutors say retired CFD lieutenant was gunned down by carjackers after he bought popcorn for Christmas

With Rudolph’s red nose on the front of his beloved Jeep, retired Chicago Fire Department Lt. Dwain Williams drove to a Southwest Side shop in December of 2020 for the well-established Chicago Christmas tradition of picking up fresh gourmet popcorn.

Little did Williams know, prosecutors alleged, that four people followed in a sedan, with the goal of seizing the Jeep for a quick payday. But when the alleged carjackers confronted the retired fireman, Williams, 65 — while leaving the shop with the popcorn in one arm — took out his firearm and tried to defend himself before he was shot and killed.

“What should have been an unremarkable day turned into one of violence and death,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Sara Grgurovic on Monday during opening statements.

Three defendants, Dwain Johnson, Devin Barron and Jaylen Saulsberry, are standing trial on murder and vehicular hijacking charges under unusual circumstances: Three separate juries are hearing the murder trial, one assigned to each defendant.

A court administrator went back through records since 2007 and could find no other instances of three juries called for one trial, though the county has held double jury trials.

The setup allows the men charged to present different defenses, particularly when their interests may not align, while ensuring that witnesses don’t need to be called for three separate trials that would gobble up additional time on the court’s calendar.

“By doing this like this, it probably leads to one extra day of the trial for you, but three and a half weeks less of trial for the rest of the system,” Cook County Judge Timothy Joyce told the jurors while swearing them in.

With three times as many jurors as usual, one set of jurors sat in the jury box, while one sat in plastic chairs set up nearby and the third jury sat in the wooden pews in the gallery. The jurors were periodically excused, hearing only the opening arguments geared toward their particular defendant.

“Those are probably the worst seats in the room and there’s nothing I can do about that,” Joyce told the jurors on the wooden benches, though he said the three sets of juries would rotate so that each group would have chances to sit in the most comfortable jury box chairs.

Prosecutors alleged that Johnson, Barron and Saulsberry, along with a fourth person, David Williams, spotted Dwain Williams’ Jeep on Dec. 3, 2020, and thought they could sell it for a “substantial amount of money.” So they followed him to the popcorn shop, according to prosecutors, and pointed guns at him.

Williams, 15 at the time, pleaded guilty in juvenile court to aggravated battery with a firearm in exchange for testifying against his co-defendants.

Prosecutors told the jurors that in addition to Williams’ testimony, they would present video surveillance evidence and testimony from one of the defendant’s girlfriends and show that Saulsberry left a shoe behind, which matched his DNA.

Defense attorneys for the men countered that the testimony from David Williams, who cut a deal with prosecutors, was not trustworthy, and that the video surveillance evidence is unclear.

“His mother is telling him what to do, what to say, to get out of this any way you can. That’s exactly what David Williams did,” said David Sotomayor, Saulsberry’s attorney. “This model citizen.”

Attorneys for Johnson, the alleged getaway car driver, said an off-duty police officer who saw the sedan trailing Williams’ Jeep described the driver as having long dreadlocks or braids, and pointed out that their client’s hair has always been short.

Dwain Williams’ family lined the gallery for the opening statements. He spent more than two decades with the Chicago Fire Department after joining in 1992. His last assignment was at the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications.

“He put his whole heart into the city,” his wife, Karen Armstrong-Williams, told the Tribune in 2020 shortly after his death.

mabuckley@chicagotribune.com