Reduced sentence ordered for Chicago killer

Posted in Related Deaths

9-25-2010 Illinois:

Court rules for Chicago woman who took part in the 2004 murder of a man she believed raped her infant daughter

A Chicago woman convicted of killing a man who allegedly raped her infant daughter should get a sharply reduced sentence, an appeals court has found, ruling that the judge who sentenced her to 67 years in prison failed to properly consider the "undeniably egregious nature of the provocation" that led to the 2004 slaying.

Laquita Calhoun, now 29, was bathing her 1-year-old daughter when she noticed signs of sexual abuse and went to confront a neighbor. Alonzo Jones, 29, confessed to abusing the girl, Calhoun told police. Another neighbor revealed Jones had molested one of her children too, witnesses said.

Jones was then beaten by several people in the apartment, then tossed screaming into the trunk of a car. "Take me to the hospital," one witness said Jones pleaded from the trunk, according to records cited by the Illinois Appellate Court. "Take me to the police station. Sorry (La)quita."

"You going to die tonight," Calhoun allegedly responded. Another woman in the car turned up the radio. The women stopped at a liquor store, where Calhoun slashed Jones with a broken bottle, and several men standing nearby began kicking him after being told Jones had raped an infant.

Later, mechanics failed to hear Jones' pleas for help at a shop where Calhoun went to repair a flat tire. Jones was eventually taken to an alley near Michigan Avenue and 56th Street, beaten with a stick by Calhoun until he collapsed, and run over with the car several times.

The medical examiner's office ruled Jones died of sharp- and blunt-force trauma.

After a jury found Calhoun guilty of murder, Cook County Judge Stanley Sacks said he had never seen a more "horrendous, vicious crime" and said her vigilantism had cost Calhoun the right to "live among a free society." He sentenced her to 67 years in prison, including the maximum 60 years for murder.

But the appeals court in Chicago wrote that Sacks failed in his sentencing to recognize that Calhoun had undergone a provocation "as extreme as any mother … could sustain" and, being unlikely to reoffend, deserved a sentence closer to 20 years. The court also noted that all the other defendants in the case got more lenient sentences from Sacks. ..Source.. by Steve Schmadeke, Tribune reporter