Man found guilty in murder of Washington Park mayor
BELLEVILLE • Prosecutors overcame bizarre and contradictory eyewitness testimony in convincing a jury to deliver a guilty verdict here Friday against Aaron "Chill" Jackson for the 2010 murder of Washington Park Mayor John Thornton.
The courtroom remained silent after the decision was announced about 4:30 p.m. Jackson faces a possible life sentence. He remained calm but his mother exited in tears, as did Thornton's widow.
"I just want to thank God for his justice," Sharon Thornton said later.
It was a rocky road to a conviction in a trial that left unanswered questions about why Washington Park's top elected official was slain and whether the community's former top police detective committed serious misconduct.
Testimony of what were presented to be two eyewitnesses fell flat in front of the jury earlier this week. One recanted earlier statements that she saw Jackson run from the murder scene; the other told the jury that she saw him, then that she didn't remember, then that she did.
Prosecutors said after the verdict that two additional witnesses could not be called because they refused to cooperate.
It was the second time Jackson was tried in the case. In October, Judge Milton Wharton declared a mistrial after another prosecution eyewitness — who was not called this time — had a dramatic collapse in front of the jury.
She told prosecutors that Washington Park Det. Kim McAfee had offered her money to say that he had not been present at the murder scene.
McAfee was then questioned as a possible suspect in the murder, a state police detective testified this week. McAfee himself was not present; he is serving a 26-month federal prison term for fraud related to work his private security company did for the East St. Louis schools and housing authority.
He continued to cast a cloud on the murder trial. The witness who recanted her testimony told the court that McAfee threatened to lock her up if she didn't claim she saw Jackson at the murder.
"When you have allegations of corrupt police, guilty men may walk free," Brendan Kelly, the St. Clair County state's attorney, said after the verdict. "When you have witnesses that lie because they are afraid to do the right thing, guilty men may walk free. We knew these risks, but we owed it to the family and the public to try. I am very grateful the jury was able to see the truth."
The jury deliberated about 4-1/2 hours. Its seven women and five men left the courthouse without speaking to reporters.
In his closing argument, prosecutor Steve Sallerson hammered on the physical evidence: "The blood, the fingerprint, and the gunshot residue."
State police forensic experts said a small blood stain on Jackson's jeans was "likely" but not positively from Thornton. They also found gunshot residue on his T-shirt, jeans and left hand, and said that among dozens of fingerprints on the outside of the car in which Thornton was killed, one was Jackson's.
Defense lawyer Thomas Keefe III countered that Jackson is right-handed and had no gunpowder on that hand. Keefe also said none of Jackson's DNA or blood was inside Thornton's car.
Police said they never established a motive for Thornton's murder.
The part-time mayor, said by some to be trying to clean up the city's crime-ridden streets, was driving his car the morning of April 1, 2010, when he was shot by someone riding inside, officials said. The vehicle struck a tree at Caseyville Avenue and 48th Street in Washington Park.
Joe Bates, a former state police detective who led the investigation, said the probe did not explore why Thornton was not at his scheduled work shift, nor subpoena Thornton's cell phone records.
Keefe said he would expect more "when a leader in our community is gunned down."
He repeatedly referred to McAfee's actions, and inferred that his client might have been framed. Jackson "is a straw man, not a bogeyman," the lawyer insisted.
But prosecutors said McAfee was "a red herring" and that the evidence pointed to Jackson, not the detective.
Washington Park, long saddled with political corruption and tucked on the edge of East St. Louis, is one of the region's poorest and most violent cities. Prosecutors indicated the environment made it tough to produce quality witnesses who aren't afraid of retaliation.
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