At 8:45 p.m. on September 29, 2009, Chicago police officers Matthew Wirth and Victor Flores arrested 24-year-old Pierre Green following a foot chase on the south side of Chicago, Illinois.
Green was charged with possession of a stolen motor vehicle and illegal possession of a firearm by a felon, and with being an armed habitual criminal based on prior convictions for possession of a stolen vehicle and illegal use of a firearm.
He went to trial on July 28, 2011, in Cook County Circuit Court. He waived a jury and agreed to a bench trial before Cook County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Davy.
Before the trial began, Green and his attorney, assistant Cook County public defender Trenis Jackson, were at odds, both on the law and the evidence.
Jackson said, “I, along with my colleague Peter Kasparis…have explained to Mr. Green that based on our analysis, that given his background that he does, in fact, fit the criteria to be charged as an armed habitual offender. And Mr. Green, however, as is his right, he disagreed with our analysis, and unless he has changed his mind since we last spoke a few moments ago, he said he wants to address that issue to preserve it for appeal.”
Jackson added, “Mr. Green asked me, in effect, to adopt his analysis, which I cannot do because, no disrespect to him, I believe that his analysis is incorrect.” Jackson said he preferred that Green speak for himself.
The judge allowed Green to address the court but restricted him to “talking about the facts of the case.”
Green said that he believed his prior convictions that the prosecution was relying upon to charge him with being an armed habitual criminal had occurred prior to the date the habitual criminal statute was enacted. Green argued that the statute was not retroactive. He said he had a prior case decision that prohibited the prosecution from bringing a charge of being a habitual criminal based on offenses “that he had committed before the law was passed August 2 nd of 2005.”
“And that is exactly what has been done with me in my present situation,” Green said. “The charges that this refers to here is a crime that was committed before August 2005. And case law here specifically state[s] – if you would like to see it, Your Honor, that this law was put into effect August 2, 2005. And they cannot…use a crime that I committed before that date.”
Judge Davy demurred, saying that the issue would not become an issue unless he were convicted. “But,” the judge added, “if there is a finding of guilty, I certainly will consider that in terms of the case law.”
Green then said, “One other thing. I was able to get some paperwork and I asked my attorney to submit [it] on my behalf, which I am pretty sure should strongly prove my innocence in this case, your Honor.”
Davy cautioned him. “Once again, Mr. Green,” the judge said. “I asked you not to talk about the facts of the case.”
The judge asked if Green was referring to records from the Chicago Office of Emergency Management, the agency that provides 911 service. “This may well come out in the course of the trial. Either side may be introducing this?”
The lead prosecutor, Daniel Piwowarczyk, said, “I don’t have any witnesses that could lay the necessary foundation for the State to introduce [the records] into evidence.”
Jackson then said, “Judge, without being specific, and this goes into strategy, which belongs to his lawyer. And I indicated to Mr. Green that perhaps in terms of strategy, he and I could agree to disagree and I gave him, without stating the reasons…what my theory of the case is and what our strategy is. And I am not certain whether that satisfies him or not. And there is nothing I can do about that.”
“I imagine also, Mr. Jackson,” the judge said, “that your strategy might be and should be fluid depending on what evidence is presented, as well.”
“Absolutely,” Jackson replied.
The judge told Green that with regard to the 911 reports, “depending on what the testimony is, [the reports] may or may not be to your advantage to have your attorney present that.”
The prosecution called three witnesses. The first was Victor Hicks, who testified that shortly before 9 p.m. on September 28, 2009, he was sitting in his car with the motor running talking to a friend. “We had just pulled up, finishing some conversation” when a masked man with a pistol ordered him and his friend out of the car, a maroon 2005 Ford Taurus.
They got out and the man drove off, Hicks said. He could not identify the robber because his face was covered with a mask.
Officer Victor Flores then testified that he and his partner, Matthew Wirth, were driving northbound on Halsted Street near 106 th Street, responding to a call of a “suspicious vehicle,” when they saw a car that fit the description. Flores said he made a computer request for information on the license plate of the car, which was X905579, and activated his siren and Mars lights.
Flores said the car, a Ford Taurus, turned eastbound onto 105 th Street, then stopped in the middle of the street.
He said that he approached on the driver’s side while Officer Wirth approached on the passenger side. Flores said that as he neared the door, he spotted a handgun in the driver’s lap. “When I observed the gun, I told him to step out of the car,” Flores said. “At which time, he looked away from me and sped away in the car.”
When the officers got back to their car, the computer informed them that the Taurus was stolen the previous night during a carjacking. It was Hicks’s car.
Flores recounted how the Taurus went north into an alley from 105 th Street up to 103 rd Street, then headed east to Lowe Street, then drove south. Lowe ended in a dead end at Fernwood Park. “There is no way you can go from there,” Flores said. “So that is where he stopped the vehicle.”
Flores said the driver emerged, looked back at them and then ran east, holding a pistol in his hand. Flores said he and his partner chased on foot.
Flores said the driver took off two t-shirts as he ran and tossed them in a yard near 10359 South Wallace Street. “We couldn’t see exactly if it was the gun, but he wrapped the T-shirts in it and that is where he tossed the items…As he was running, we observed him go to his waistband and that is when he started wrapping his T-shirts around the item.”
Officer Flores said he and his partner then split up as the driver ran northbound into an alley. He said he went into the alley and Officer Wirth went to Wallace Street. He said Officer Wirth soon radioed him to say that he spotted the driver at the corner of 103 rd Street and Wallace Street, talking to a security guard outside a corner store.
Officer Flores said that when he arrived at that location, Officer Wirth had Green in handcuffs.
Meanwhile, another officer who had responded to a radio call of the foot chase recovered a handgun and two T-shirts near where Officer Flores said he saw the driver drop them. He testified that the gun was “[t]he same gun that was on the defendant’s lap.”
Flores testified that he saw the driver from the side and in a face-to-face view. He said the driver was Green.
During cross-examination, Flores conceded that he had lost sight of the driver during the foot chase. He also conceded that the clothing and gun recovered had not been submitted for any forensic examination, including DNA testing or for fingerprints. Likewise, the car had not been examined for fingerprints.
Officer Wirth testified, in contrast to his partner, that they were driving southbound on Halsted Street. He agreed that the Taurus turned eastbound onto 105 th Street and stopped. His account from then on mirrored Officer Flores’s testimony. Officer Wirth said he, too, lost sight of the driver until the officer spotted him outside the corner store. “He was kind of like standing over…by a drug store or a convenience store,” Officer Wirth testified. “And he was standing there and tried to engage a security guard there…As I got closer, he ran.”
He said the driver ran into an empty lot that was closed off by a tall fence. “He ran up to it and then he just stopped.” At that point, Officer Wirth said he handcuffed the man, who turned out to be Green.
The prosecution then rested its case.
Jackson moved for a directed verdict of acquittal. He said the narrative from police that after being pulled over, the driver of the car made no effort to conceal the weapon was not credible. Jackson noted that there was no forensic evidence connecting the car, the clothing, or the gun to Green.
Judge Davy denied the motion as to the firearms charges. He did acquit Green of the possession of a stolen vehicle charge, but he denied an acquittal on a lesser included misdemeanor charge of criminal trespass to a vehicle.
Judge Davy also rejected Green’s argument that the armed habitual criminal charge did not apply retroactively.
Jackson then said that the Green would not be testifying and that the defense was resting its case.
At that point, Green spoke up. “Is it too late to stop the process?” he asked.
“You mean you want to testify?” Judge Davy asked.
“No, sir,” Green declared. “Based on the fact that the State, you know, I mean things that should have been presented that wasn’t. But, I just really do not wish to continue with this process. The facts of my case were not disclosed. I had notes. But, it is what it is. My attorney did his best. It was too much stuff that should have been disclosed and wasn’t disclosed.”
Green said he did not understand what the judge had said in denying the motion for acquittal. “I don’t understand what is being said right now,” he said. “So I have no knowledge which direction this situation is going in.”
“Mr. Green,” Judge Davy said. “At this point the process has been that both sides have rested. And the trial is over. And the only thing left then is closing arguments and me to render a verdict…Mr. Jackson, do you know what exactly your client means when he wants to stop the process?”
“Judge, I am at a loss to really understand what he means,” Jackson said. He said that he had had numerous discussions with Green in court and at the jail regarding certain strategies and issues. He said he had told Green that there was no way he could “guarantee any specific outcome.”
Green retorted, “He didn’t tell me that, Your Honor. He told me some facts of my case. That he failed to present…that lies were said and stuff he failed to present, Your Honor.”
Jackson said he had nothing further to say. “I stand mute,” he said.
“Well, then,” Judge Davy said. “The process at this point is closing arguments and we will continue.”
Jackson, in his closing argument, stressed that the police version of events was not credible and that the officers had lost sight of the driver of the car before ultimately arresting Green. Their story, Jackson said, “defies logic and common sense.”
Prosecutor Piwowarczyk said, “The officers testified credibly and consistently with only very minor and tangential inconsistencies between their testimony about the same incident.”
Judge Davy said that the prosecution had proved the case beyond a reasonable doubt. He convicted Green of the weapons charges and misdemeanor criminal trespass to a stolen vehicle.
Prior to sentencing, Daniel Coyne was appointed to represent Green in a motion for a new trial based on evidence that the officers had testified falsely.
Following a hearing before Judge Davy, Coyne argued that Green deserved a new trial based on Jackson’s failure to fully investigate the case and to present evidence contradicting the police officers.
Coyne pointed to documents that Green had obtained through a public records request prior to his trial showing that the police radio call that the officers claimed they received that caused them to focus on the Taurus actually involved a call about a stolen Saturn with license plate X951775.
The plate number for the suspicious vehicle call was for “a completely different plate number,” Coyne said. “The suspicious automobile call was for a car with occupants. It is plural. It is at least two people, maybe more.”
Coyne noted that the call was broadcast on the police radio just 10 minutes before the officers stopped the Taurus. The call they said they were responding to was “not the description that matched the vehicle that the police pulled over,” Coyne said. “It may have been a fishing expedition. They might have thought it looked good, but it does not come up to probable cause because it is dispositive by way of the license numbers.”
Coyne also noted the officers did not learn of the report of the Taurus being stolen until 24 hours after they arrested Green.
And perhaps just as significant, Coyne noted that prior to Green’s trial, Green had informed Jackson that 105 th Street does not intersect with Halsted Street, so the officers’ testimony that the Taurus turned onto 105 th Street from Halsted after they activated their siren and lights was false.
He noted that one officer said they were driving northbound and the other officer said they were headed southbound when they spotted the Taurus. “No one was quite sure where they were going, but they were all certain that they stopped the vehicle on 105 th Street east of Halsted,” Coyne said. “And it just isn’t true. It didn’t happen, because there is no 105 th Street. If you try to take the route they talked about, that route is impossible.”
“At this particular point though, it is not up to us to solve the mystery,” Coyne said. “It is not up to us to solve the crime. It is not up to us to figure out…what actually happened. It is only up to us to determine whether or not the trier of fact, this Court, would have benefited from having this additional information.”
“There’s no excuse for not presenting to the Court information that was at his [Jackson’s] disposal,” Coyne argued. “He was supplied those documents by the defendant.”
Judge Davy noted that Jackson was an experienced and competent defense attorney. “In this particular case, however, I believe that his performance in terms of not going through the [911 records], inconsistency in the testimony of the officers…I find the performance was deficient,” the judge ruled. On September 20, 2013, Judge Davy vacated Green’s convictions and ordered a new trial.
Two weeks later, on October 4, 2013, Judge Davy held a brief hearing on a motion filed by Coyne to quash Green’s arrest and suppress the evidence in the case.
The prosecution stipulated that the police officers did not receive information about the Taurus until a day after they actually stopped it, and that the call they said prompted them to stop the Taurus was actually for a stolen Saturn with multiple occupants, and a different license plate number.
“In this particular case, based on the testimony that was presented, there is no basis for the officers to make that stop,” Judge Davy ruled. “So at this time the motion to quash arrest and suppress evidence will be granted.”
At that point, the prosecution asked that the case be dismissed. Judge Davy granted the motion and Green was released.
Green subsequently filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Chicago and officers Flores and Wirth. In March 2020, the lawsuit was settled for $300,000.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 12-07-2025
