Former Death Row inmate Aaron Patterson, who became a high-profile community activist after he was pardoned by former governor George Ryan and ran unsuccessfully this year for the Illinois House, was arrested Thursday by federal authorities who said they would file drug and weapons charges against him.
Patterson, 40, was being held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago pending an appearance Friday morning in U.S. District Court. Authorities said that at that hearing they would charge Patterson with conspiracy to possess and distribute more than 100 grams of heroin. Patterson and another man were arrested in an undercover sting Thursday after they allegedly took possession of four handguns and Patterson delivered about a pound of marijuana.
The arrests capped a five-month investigation that included undercover heroin and marijuana sales, authorities said. During the probe, Patterson asked a federal agent for several types of guns, a law enforcement source said, including a MAC-10 submachine gun with a silencer.
Mark Mannie, 36, was taken into custody with Patterson during the sting by Drug Enforcement Administration agents and Chicago police just after 2 p.m. A law enforcement source said the suspects were arrested after their car was stopped on the Bishop Ford Expressway in Chicago as they headed south. Also facing charges was Isaiah Kitchen, 55, who allegedly was part of the drug conspiracy.
Patterson left the ranks of the state’s condemned in 2003 as Ryan was making his historic clemency decision emptying Death Row. Patterson immediately went into community activism, regularly protesting alleged police brutality and conditions inside Cook County Jail.
News of Patterson’s arrest stunned the lawyers and activists who have supported him. Criminal defense attorney Tommy Brewer, who represented Patterson on the local charges, said the federal case does not represent the Patterson he knows.
“I don’t know when he would have time to do anything like this–he’s an activist,” Brewer said. “He goes from one protest line to another.”
As of Thursday night, Patterson had not been charged with a crime. Brewer said he spoke with the U.S. attorneys handling the case Thursday, and they were drafting the complaint. Brewer expressed doubt about the alleged weapons violation.
“What would Aaron do with a gun?” Brewer said. “The guy’s a millionaire-in-waiting.”
In June 2003 Patterson filed a federal lawsuit seeking $30 million, alleging that he was tortured by Chicago police and that Cook County prosecutors covered it up. In the suit, he contended he was tortured or threatened by former Cmdr. Jon Burge and other officers investigating the 1986 murders of Vincent and Rafaela Sanchez in their South Chicago home.
Authorities said he confessed to the stabbing deaths, but Patterson used a paper clip to scratch a message into a bench in an interrogation room. “Aaron 4/30 I lie about murders,” it read. “Police threaten me with violence. Slapped and suffocated me with plastic. No lawyer or dad. No phone. Signed false statement to murders.”
Although Patterson eventually was exonerated in the Sanchez murders, while that original case was pending he pleaded guilty to attempted murder charges in another case. Federal prosecutors said they would charge him as a convicted felon in possession of a firearm based on that conviction.
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Jo Ann Patterson was unaware of her son’s arrest when she was contacted by phone at her South Side home after 6 p.m. Thursday. “It sounds serious, but it’s not true,” she said.
Her son has been concerned since his release from prison that he would be a target of law enforcement, she said, and has been very careful to avoid trouble.
“That’s exactly why he wouldn’t be involved in any guns and drugs because he knew he would be set up the way he was set up on Death Row,” she said. “He’s wanted to be squeaky clean because of all that.”
Patterson had been living with his mother and she said she last saw him Thursday morning when she left home at 9:30.
“He was dressed and wearing a shirt and tie. I thought he was going out to make a presentation,” she said.
She said Patterson has been trying to get a series of business ventures off the ground, including a cellular phone company. Patterson recently told the Tribune that his girlfriend had his baby girl on June 29.
Patterson, who used past and present gang members as campaign workers, ran for the state House in spring. He finished third in a field of three Democrats in the South Side’s 6th District, won by incumbent freshman Rep. Patricia Bailey.
He had fully shed his gang past, supporters said.
“He would try to talk to gang members,” Brewer said. “He would tell them to put that aside and get involved with the political process.”
Patterson and Kitchen conspired to sell just under 200 grams of heroin “to a cooperating individual on four occasions since March,” according to an announcement on Patterson’s arrest, officials said.
Patterson also was to be charged with distributing more than 5 pounds of marijuana to the same person four times since April and with being a felon in possession of firearms.
Although Patterson became involved in numerous social causes since his release, police have believed him to be still involved in gang activity. In recent months, gang analysts with the Police Department have given briefings at deployment meetings mentioning that they believed Patterson–whose nickname is “Ranger”–was a high-ranking member of the Black P Stones gang, perhaps even the top leader.
Patterson’s father was a longtime Chicago police officer, and Patterson was raised in a strict Catholic home on the South Side, graduating from De La Salle Institute. By his own admission, he strayed as a young man, joined the Apache Rangers and soon became the gang’s leader. Patterson and his lawyers said his behavior and propensity for violence made him a usual suspect for police on the South Side.
In 1970 Kitchen, then 21, was convicted with two other Blackstone Rangers in the shooting of two men who had testified against another member of the gang. A federal jury in December 1992 convicted Kitchen, known as “Zeus” or “Zoom,” on drug-possession charges and firearms violations. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and was released in October 2002.
Patterson is not the first of the four exonerees pardoned by Ryan–a group that also includes Leroy Orange, Madison Hobley and Stanley Howard–to run into trouble since 2003. Orange has been charged with delivering cocaine to an undercover police officer.
“It’s really an unfortunate and tragic situation. But it sort of shows that people who have been through what Aaron has have a hard time adjusting to the norms of society,” said Rob Warden, director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University.
Among the lawyers representing Patterson in his civil suit against Burge and the other officers is Joey Mogul of the People’s Law Office. “This is a complete shock,” Mogul said.