Each flicker of Michael Ceriale’s smiling face on the television screen the past week has conjured a fresh wave of emotions for Chicago Police Officer Jackie Roberson: grief, anger and, finally, frustration.
“It’s harder every day–the waiting, the not knowing,” said Roberson, who, along with thousands of police officers and others, have been waiting more than a week for a jury to return a verdict in the trial of the teenager accused of killing Ceriale.
Roberson squeezed Ceriale’s hand and slapped his face to keep him conscious as he lay bleeding from a gunshot wound in August 1998.
“When I turn on the news and see Mike and see those baby blues–he had the prettiest baby blue eyes you ever saw–I remember looking into them that night,” Roberson said Wednesday afternoon in the Wentworth station roll call room, the same room where Ceriale reported to on the night he was shot.
The emotions surrounding Ceriale’s death run deep for Roberson and other Chicago police officers who knew and worked with him. And the wait for a verdict has been excruciating. The trial, including jury deliberations, of Jonathan Tolliver, 19, has lasted more than month.
Wednesday was the eighth full day of jury deliberations, and it appeared little progress was made toward a resolution. About 11 a.m., the foreman sent a note to the judge saying the jurors had “examined and re-examined the evidence. We have all compared our notes, read over our testimony.” Still, the note said, jurors were unable to reach a unanimous decision, and in fact could not agree unanimously on whether they were deadlocked.
“There is a majority that feels we are,” the note said.
Earlier, jurors reported to the judge that they were deadlocked on one of four charges against Tolliver, and they expressed concerns that one juror could not deliberate fairly because he had been arrested on drug charges, which were later dropped.
More Top Picks Colgate 360 Total Advanced Floss Tip
But Judge Dennis Porter ordered the deliberations to continue.
The jury will take up the case again Thursday morning.
With each passing day, officers said they grow more worried that a murder conviction–and some sense of emotional closure–may never come.
“It would be such a slap in the face to every officer on this force if this young man lost his life protecting the citizens of Chicago and justice is never served,” Wentworth tactical officer Barry Bryant said Wednesday. “I would personally take it as an insult.”
Bryant said he interviewed one of the trial witnesses in the case who recanted the statement implicating Tolliver that she gave in 1998.
For Ceriale’s partner, waiting for a verdict has been more difficult than watching the trial testimony.
“This has seemed like three years,” said Joe Ferenzi, as he waited for an elevator in the courthouse on Friday, when the jury had been deliberating three days.
Ferenzi said he has struggled to come to terms with the death of his partner since 3:38 a.m. Aug. 15, 1998, when his night on patrol with Ceriale exploded in a single gunshot. Ceriale died six days later.
Almost every day, family members of the slain officer, including his father, aunts and uncles, cousins, and his partner, have been camped out in an administrative office at the criminal courthouse at 26th Street and California Avenue. Wearing buttons depicting a photo of Ceriale with the words “touched by an angel,” they have been steering clear of the media.
The defendant’s mother, Shewanda Tolliver, said the wait has been hard on her too. Her heart stops every time the phone rings because she is not sure if the call will bring joy or anguish.
When she’s not in court following the trial, Tolliver, 37, has endured the “horrible wait” for a verdict by holing up in her fourth-floor apartment at the Robert Taylor Homes in the 4200 block of South State Street, catching snippets of sleep between prayer sessions with members of her extended family.
“I have no idea for sure what could be taking them so long,” she said of the jury. “But I think somebody’s in there fighting for my child. I really believe that.”
She said she is preparing to move her family out of the city to make a fresh start. She said she and her family have been treated poorly by the criminal justice system.
“That’s how we’ve been treated–like the bad guys,” she said. “They make room for every officer who comes to court, but they don’t make room for members of my family who want to get in.”
She grieves for the Ceriale family, she said.
“I am truly sorry that they lost a child. I want to know what happened to him just like they do,” Tolliver said.
Many police officers also are in emotional turmoil.
“It is difficult because you don’t really know how it’s going to come out, so you have to keep yourself ready for anything,” said Lt. Virginia Drozd, the former midnight watch commander in the Wentworth District who was on duty the night Ceriale was shot. “Then, depending on how it goes, there will be other things you have to go through, for us and the family. If it’s a mistrial, we’ll have to go through the same thing all over again, the same wait.”
Drozd, the last supervisor to rattle off Ceriale’s name in roll call, left work and attended closing arguments in the case after a friend of the Ceriale family e-mailed her at the office to let her know the trial was drawing to a close.
But she has not been back to the trial since.
“I didn’t stay too long because I didn’t want to get myself all involved in it and thinking about it that much,” she said. “It would just be too upsetting.”
Since losing his partner, Ferenzi has transferred out of Wentworth, bought a house, taken the detective’s test, married his longtime girlfriend and honeymooned in Tahiti. But a part of him remains at the site of the shooting. And the conclusion of the trial will not change that.
“This is only the beginning,” Ferenzi said. Trials of three more suspects in the shooting will follow. Then there are possible appeals. For those close to the case, such as Ferenzi and Tony Ceriale, the officer’s father, there is no end in sight.
Roberson saw the elder Ceriale in the courtroom when she testified in the trial.
“I couldn’t even look in the eyes of Mike’s dad, because there was just so much pain there,” she said.
In the months after Ceriale died, Drozd said, she would report to work each night and “say a little prayer: `Please, Lord, don’t let any of my guys get hurt tonight.'”
More Top Picks Best Fitness Trackers For Swimming
In June, she left the Wentworth District and took over as commanding officer in charge of recruit training at the Police Academy.
“I’m trying to keep myself on an even keel over it,” she said of the trial.
Drozd said she was upset by reports that the juror arrested on drug charges had failed to disclose his arrest during the jury selection process.
“But then I thought, OK, the jury foreman came out and said he thinks they can get a verdict,” she said. “Perhaps logic will prevail.”
At noon Wednesday, Drozd switched on the television in her office to catch the news and find out the latest developments at the trial.
But still there was no verdict.