Pam Cook will have to wait longer for justice to be served in the slaying of her police officer husband nine years ago and for peace to come for her family.
A Cook County judge declared a hung jury Friday and ruled a mistrial in the case against Jemetric Nicholson, a felon who is currently imprisoned and accused of brutally shooting Cook’s husband, Metra police officer Thomas Cook, twice in the back of the head.
More than 25 hours of deliberation wasn’t enough for jurors to reach a verdict in the difficult and emotional case. Prosecutors and Nicholson’s defense already have set a retrial for January.
Pam Cook said she has faith in the system and that authorities will not give up..
“It will give us peace. It will give my husband the honor that he had. I think that it will just help the family move on,” the mother of two said Friday outside the Cook County Courthouse in Markham.
Thomas Cook, from unincorporated Dyer, Ind., was on special detail Sept. 26, 2006, in a parked squad car near the 147th St. Metra station in Harvey when he was killed. Authorities said Nicholson, who won’t be eligible for parole until the next century for convictions that include attempted murder, was out hunting for a gun and used one supplied by another man to slay Cook.
His defense contended that no physical evidence tied Nicholson to the crime and that witnesses were lying when they said he was responsible. Nicholson took the stand last week and told jurors he was someplace else that night.
Pam Cook let out a single sob after Circuit Judge Frank Zelezinski announced a mistrial Friday morning after finding the jury deadlocked. She said Friday she spoke with jurors after the trial ended.
“Most of them were sick to their stomachs because they felt so bad for me and my kids and the family,” she said. “They couldn’t even look at us because they were crying so bad.”
Jurors were split 10-2 in finding Nicholson guilty, according to a few from the 12-person panel who spoke publicly after the trial Friday.
They said one of the biggest points of contention during their sometimes heated debates was a key witness who said he saw Nicholson point the gun at Thomas Cook just before he died.
An intractable few who did not believe the testimony from Jeremy Lloyd largely led to the deadlock, jurors said Friday. Lloyd was an associate of Nicholson’s who was with him when he and a third man descended on Cook’s car. He testified in exchange for a reduced sentence for his role as lookout in Cook’s death and for the attempted murder of a Harvey cop earlier that day, authorities said.
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“There were people who believed him to the hilt, and there were people who didn’t,” said 23-year-old Tara McManus. She said she believed much of what Lloyd testified about last week.
But some on the jury did not think there was enough evidence to be convinced that Nicholson pulled the trigger, McManus said.
Notes sent out by the jury over the four days covered a wide range of aspects about the case. At one point, jurors asked if they could use Google to see a map of two south suburban communities.
One note asked for clarity about whether a person was guilty of first-degree murder if they conceal evidence, which alluded to circumstantial evidence — from prosecutors that linked a confession from Nicholson that he had in the past hidden guns in Robbins, to the fact Cook’s service weapon was recovered at a house in that village.
Another note sent from one juror to Zelezinski just 10 minutes after Friday deliberations resumed asked if she could speak directly to the prosecution and Cook’s family.
“It did get personal,” Randi Goers, 22, said of the debate behind closed doors. Goers, one of the majority who believed Nicholson is guilty, said she plans to be at the next trial to support the family.
David Sotomayor, one of two attorneys defending Nicholson, said he feels sorry that the Cook family will have to endure another trial but that his client “maintains his innocence” and would not choose to have his case retried.
Nick Swedberg is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.