A federal jury began deliberating Wednesday in the racketeering trial of Chicago’s Goonie gang, a close-knit faction of the Gangster Disciples accused of acting as “urban hunters,” terrorizing residents and ruling territory in the Englewood neighborhood through unrelenting waves of gun violence.
After hearing nearly five weeks of evidence and eight hours of closing arguments over two days, the jury was sent back to deliberate the main charge of racketeering conspiracy at about 4:15 p.m.
About 10 minutes later, U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey said the panel had sent a note asking if they could retire for the day and resume talks on Thursday, which the judge obliged.
In an unusual move, Blakey has bifurcated the closing arguments in the case. If the jury comes back with a guilty verdict on the racketeering charge against any of the three defendants, both sides will then argue the specific alleged acts of murder contained in the indictment, and the panel will then deliberate those counts.
On trial are reputed Goonie leader Romeo “O-Dog” Blackman and two alleged henchmen, Terrance “T” Smith and Jolicious “Jo Jo” Turman.
Each is charged with racketeering conspiracy as well as committing murder in furtherance of a racketeering conspiracy, which carries a mandatory life sentence upon conviction. In all, the indictment alleged the Goonies were responsible for 10 slayings and six attempted murders in an 18-month span from 2014 to 2016.
Over the past five weeks, jurors have watched killings play out on surveillance video. They’ve seen social media posts where Goonie members allegedly kept a tally of victims and “rejoiced” in the death of rivals. And they’ve heard testimony from a parade of cooperating witnesses who described each member’s alleged role in the organization, including one nicknamed “Steph Curry” for his long-distance accuracy — only with a pistol, not a basketball.
In her closing argument Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Maureen McCurry said Blackman, who joined the gang as a young teen, literally “shot his way to the top,” turning the Goonies into a feared element in a neighborhood already beset by violence.
“The more (Blackman) shot, the more he was respected and feared,” McCurry said. “He put in a lot of work to get where he had to go.”
Lawyers for the defendants, meanwhile, say the government’s evidence on the specific shootings was thin, lacking in forensic corroboration, and based in large part on cooperating witnesses who testified against their fellow gang members in exchange for leniency or even immunity from prosecution.
Attorney Christopher Grohman, who represents Blackman, called it a “tough case” that was riddled with reasonable doubt, not because Blackman and his co-defendants are great guys, but because the evidence of a criminal enterprise — which prosecutors have to prove existed in order to sustain a racketeering conviction — was simply not there.
“I think the evidence is frankly overwhelming that Romeo was in a gang, that he had guns, that he was out there probably shooting at people and telling other people to shoot,” Grohman said. “But he’s not charged with that.”
That argument was echoed by attorneys for Turman and Smith, who said the Goonie gang brought in little in the way of money and appeared to serve no overarching purpose like drug trafficking, which is a common hallmark of street gangs.
Attorney Andrea Lyon, who represents Smith, blasted the testimony of Quincent “Man Man” Hayes, a onetime Goonie member who was allegedly shot nine times and left for dead by Smith as they walked to school in 2015.
Hayes survived and moved out of state, returning to testify in the case last month. He told the jury Smith was upset that Hayes had been arrested by police with a gun that Smith had used in an earlier murder outside the Loomis Food Mart. Smith opened fire on him after he bent down to tie his shoe, and kept firing until the gun jammed.
Lyon said Hayes was a “bought witness,” a criminal who’d been paid thousands of dollars by law enforcement for information over the years and received immunity from prosecution.
“He’s been bought with time, with money, with immunity, with benefits, all those things that the judge said you have to look at with caution and great care,” Lyon said.
Lyon also urged the jury to put aside whatever emotion they may feel over all the killings. As her PowerPoint displayed an image of a heart drawn on a cracked sidewalk with the word “LOVE,” Lyon said the tears shed over losing a loved one are real, and they belong in the trial.
“But they cannot make the decision for you,” she said.
The Goonie gang trial is the latest in a string of major racketeering cases brought by the U.S. attorney’s office aimed at the leaders of Chicago’s splintered gang factions that prosecutors say are driving the city’s rampant gun violence.
In November, a federal jury found the reputed leader of Chicago’s Wicked Town gang faction and one of his top lieutenants guilty of racketeering conspiracy involving a string of murders, shootings, robberies and narcotics trafficking on the West Side stretching back two decades.
Later this year, five alleged members of the South Side’s “O Block” gang faction are set to go to trial on a racketeering conspiracy indictment accusing them of a pattern of violence that includes the downtown slaying of Chicago rapper FBG Duck in 2020.
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Unlike more traditional street gangs that were highly organized and focused on protecting drug turf, the Goonies allegedly engaged in a shockingly petty cycle of violence with rivals, where shooting at “opps” was an almost daily routine and killings were bragged about on Facebook and other social media.
Prosecutors said the currency of the Goonies “was power and respect,” and that to achieve it they used most of the money earned through membership dues and drug sales to buy more guns, many through a straw purchasing pipeline that trafficked weapons purchased from gun stores in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Through social media, undercover recordings and witness testimony, the jury heard how the Goonies obsessed over the “score” between them and their rivals, with each shooting of one of their own met with immediate and often indiscriminate retaliation.
In his rebuttal argument Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Albert Berry, the lead prosecutor on the case, said when all was said and done, the Goonie enterprise existed for one purpose: “To murder.”
And why?
“Because Goonie had to be the top dog,” Berry said. “Goonie had to run Englewood.”
