CHICAGO (AP) - A man who bragged about killing an off-duty Chicago police officer during an armed robbery was found guilty Thursday of first-degree murder.
Antwon Carter, flanked by sheriff’s deputies, shuffled calmly out of Cook County Circuit Court after he was convicted of the 2010 murder of Officer Michael Bailey.
Bailey, 62, was wiping down an automobile he purchased ahead of a planned retirement, when he was shot three times during a shootout with Carter. Bailey was wearing a baseball jersey over his uniform at the time. He had just finished a shift on then-Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s security detail.
In closing arguments Thursday, Assistant State’s Attorney Natosha Toller held up the blood-stained uniform shirt Bailey was wearing the morning he was killed.
“The wounds show that the gunshots pierced through his uniform shirt above the jersey” that Bailey wore over his blue top after finishing his shift.
Carter, 32, was arrested a year later, based largely on statements he made to friends and prison inmates, bragging about killing Bailey. The informants testified Carter confessed to them in separate conversations after he was sent to prison on a parole violation about two months after the shooting.
One of the informants, Floyd Payne, testified he heard Carter bragging in December 2010 when both were in a lockup at a suburban courthouse.
“The dark-skinned skinny guy said something like he killed a police officer,” said Payne, who went on to allege Carter also mentioned the shooting occurred early in the morning.
Assistant Public Defender Ed Koziboski, told the jury the incriminating boasts of Carter didn’t match with the facts of the crime.
“Antwon Carter is telling these stories because that’s how you build your cred on the street, making you bigger than you are, making you more than just a stick-up kid,” Koziboski said to the jury. “How do you get respect? By being the crazy guy who killed that officer.”
Carter wasn’t charged with the murder until a year after Bailey’s death. His trial was delayed by the prosecutors’ trying him first on carjacking charges, for which Carter was convicted.
Bailey was among five Chicago police officers killed in 2010, one of the department’s deadliest in its 164-year history. Prosecutors also obtained convictions in the other slayings.
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