Imagine you’re a 19-year-old student getting ready to enroll in a semester at college and out of nowhere police officials arrest you. You find yourself being jailed for nearly half a month without communication with a lawyer or your family.
What’s the charge? Witnessing a crime. You didn’t commit the crime, but you might have an inkling of what happened. Well, this is the case of former Chicago resident Earl Moore who unfortunately found himself in a tragic situation on an afternoon in November 2015.
He was only 15 years old when he was playing at Dawes Park on the south side of Chicago and members of a gang lured 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee to an alley before murdering him execution style in broad daylight.
Judge Thaddeus Wilson issued an order to arrest four witnesses in connection with the case: Jaylen Anderson, Heavyn Taylor, Earl Moore and one unidentified witness. Each witness was issued subpoenas to appear in court, otherwise there would be punishment for contempt of court, meaning time spent in the Cook County Jail system.
Witness Heavyn Taylor, a 20-year-old grocery store employee, was distraught at a court hearing earlier this month when Judge Wilson refused to release her from jail while waiting for the trial date. At hearing the news, the young woman began to cry and her father, who was sitting in the courtroom, suffered from stress-related chest pains and had to be carried out on a stretcher.
The three men being charged with the murder of Tyshawn Lee are Corey Morgan, Dwright Boone-Doty and Kevin Edwards. The trial for Morgan and Boone-Doty began on Sept. 17th at the Leighton Criminal Court, while Edwards has already been sentenced to 25 years for first-degree murder in another case. According to the Chicago Tribune, prosecution is alleging that Morgan orchestrated the murder of Tyshawn Lee as retaliation toward a rival gang member that allegedly shot at his family.
The trial is expected to extend through the first week of October. The witnesses may remain in jail until they testify during this time.
The MouthSoap’s Take
Chicago is one of the most dangerous, urban areas to live in with the highest rate of homicides reaching 540 murders in 2016. Gang violence is so rampant that it’s understandable why witnesses of crime would be reluctant to testify in trial. There’s no guarantee of their safety.
In the case of the witnesses in the Tyshawn Lee trial, will Moore be compensated for missing an entire semester of college or will Taylor be guaranteed a job upon her release? It’s unfair that the system can disrupt your life, imprison you and then, force you to testify in a case that might be to the detriment of your life. Playing devil’s advocate, however, there have been so many unsolved cases because people will not testify or believe in the no snitching street code. But, is throwing innocent bystanders in jail for the remainder of the trial the only way to resolve this issue?
