Leaders of ‘Goonie Gang’ found guilty in federal racketeering case

CHICAGO - Three purported leaders of a street gang faction that terrorized Englewood were found guilty of racketeering charges Wednesday after a five-week trial that included evidence from nearly a dozen murders and multiple shootings allegedly perpetrated by the "Goonie Gang" over 30 months.

Seated across the courtroom from the jury, defendants Romeo Blackman, Terrence Smith and Jolicious Turman alternated between impassivity and anger as jurors delivered a mixed verdict.

The three were found guilty in a racketeering conspiracy, but the jurors— who only a few hours earlier had sent a note to the judge saying they were deadlocked. — did find that prosecutors had not proved that a handful of the murders and shootings attributed to the gang or the individual defendants were perpetrated as part of the racketeering conspiracy or by one or more of the defendants.

Jurors were set to return to the Dirksen Federal Courthouse on Thursday for a second phase of the trial, in which they will weigh whether the shootings and killings that were part of the racketeering case against the gang were committed in a "cold and calculating manner" and other factors that would add decades to the defendants’ potential prison sentences. Blackman and Smith face mandatory life sentences, and Turman at least 20 years.

The days spent in the jury room appear to have held some drama. Four days into deliberations, a juror was dismissed after admitting to panel members that she had lived near gang territory and witnessed shootings, facts she had not revealed during jury selection.

Resuming their review of the evidence with an alternate juror, the panel Wednesday morning sent a note to U.S. District Judge John R. Blakey, stating that they were unable to reach a verdict. Sent back to the jury room by Blakey to continue their deliberations, the panel of five men and six women announced a verdict about four hours later.

Jurors sat though 20 days of testimony and evidence, including from Goonie Gang members who were cooperating with prosecutors, and social media posts in which gang members bragged about shooting rivals. The gang even printed T-shirts with Goonie Gang emblazoned on them.

Between 2014 and 2016, prosecutors said the three Goonie Boss leaders were complicit in, or pulled the trigger in fatal shootings: Johnathon Johnson, killed on Jan. 22, 2014; Alonzo Williams, killed on March 21, 2014; Stanley Bobo, killed on Oct. 23, 2014; Krystal Jackson, killed on Nov. 19, 2014; Andre Donner, killed on Dec. 13, 2015; Davon Horace, killed on Jan. 15, 2016; Gerald Sias, killed on May 26, 2016; Ramal Hicks, killed on June 20, 2016; Gerald Bumper, killed on June 30, 2016; and Kenneth Whittaker, killed on July 1, 2016.

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Sias was gunned down as he waited to get his hair cut at an Englewood barbershop that had been used to film scenes for the Spike Lee film "Chi-Raq." A 10-year-old boy who was seated in a barber chair witnessed the gunmen, who hit Sias after repeatedly missing another patron who was the intended target.

Goonie leader Blackman, who was charged with seven killings, "murdered his way to the top" of a relatively small faction based on his willingness to shoot rivals. His brother was charged with witness intimidation during the trial, after a law enforcement officer in the courtroom spotted Rosco Blackman glaring at a witness from outside the courtroom and then mouthing words to the effect of "I’ll get you" while standing in the third row of the courtroom gallery. The witness had just testified that he had heard Romeo Blackman confess to the 2014 killing of a person he believed to be a police informant.

For all the shootings prosecutors attributed to the Goonies, the gang controlled only a few blocks of their Englewood neighborhood and did not appear to be involved in drug trafficking or other money-making enterprises that underpinned the violence of the hierarchical street gangs that once dominated Chicago. All three defendants had court-appointed attorneys, signaling that they did not have the means to hire their own lawyers.

Defense lawyers for the three sought to undermine the government’s picture of a coordinated criminal enterprise, admitting the trio had been involved in shootings that were carried out as a matter of self-defense in one of the city’s most violent neighborhoods. Evidence tying the individual gang leaders to particular slayings and shootings was weak, the defense said, often relying almost entirely on the testimony of gang members who had cut deals with prosecutors.

Federal authorities recently have brought similar charges against other small gang cliques, including the Wicked Town branch of the Traveling Vice Lords in Austin, and O Block, a Black Disciples faction in Woodlawn.