At about 10 a.m. on May 18, 2011, Willie Patterson, a delivery driver, was making a stop at a grocery store at 3825 West Chicago Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. While he was standing outside of his delivery truck, he heard gun shots coming from the direction of the store and took cover in the cargo hold of his truck. When the shooting stopped, Patterson climbed out and saw 28-year-old Bruce Lee staggering across Chicago Avenue. Patterson did not see any shooters.
Lee stopped at a parked car and bent over. Police found him there, holding his chest, when they arrived. He managed to say he had been shot, but then staggered to a car parked on Avers Avenue and collapsed. Lee was taken to the hospital, but died of multiple gunshot wounds.
Larue Bey, a neighborhood resident, told police that just before 10:00 a.m., he was standing in his kitchen and heard gunshots. He said they sounded like they came from right in front of his house, which faced Huron Street, a west-bound one-way street parallel to and two blocks south of Chicago Avenue. About five minutes after the gunfire stopped, Bey said he looked out of his front window and saw a four-door “red or orange [Pontiac] Bonneville-type car” going east-bound about 15 to 20 miles over the posted 20 miles per hour speed limit.
Several shell casings were recovered at the scene, but no weapon was ever found.
A few months later, on August 20, 2011, police arrested 22-year-old Darian Broomfield on a narcotics charge. During questioning, police said he told them that the man who shot Lee was 23-year-old Jaron Green. When he was shown a photographic lineup, he identified Green as the shooter.
More than a year and a half later, on April 1, 2013, police arrested Green. On May 17, 2013, Broomfield was brought to the police station and identified Green as the shooter in a live lineup.
In June 2013, Green was indicted by a Cook County grand jury on a charge of first-degree murder.
On March 20, 2014, oral arguments were held on a defense motion to dismiss the case based on a police report that said detectives had spotted a surveillance camera in the rear of an apartment building located at 732 N. Hamlin Avenue, about a block and a half south and east of the shooting. That camera viewed an alley that ran behind Chicago Avenue. The detectives viewed footage from the camera, and reported it showed a Black man running through the alley shortly after the shooting.
The report noted that the detectives requested an evidence technician be dispatched to the scene in order to recover the video tape. However, the tape was not obtained, and the prosecution reported that it contained “nothing of evidentiary value.” The motion to dismiss was denied.
The defense also moved to suppress the identification, requesting the suppression of two separate physical lineups conducted in May of 2013. In the motion, the defense contended that Broomfield and another witness, Christopher Roberson, had mistakenly identified Green due to an unduly suggestive lineup. During the suppression hearing on September 3, 2014, Sergeant Patrick McDonagh testified that, in addition to the physical lineups, Broomfield and a third witness, James Holmes, were shown photo arrays in 2011, and that both witnesses identified Green as the shooter. Detective Rolando Rodriguez also testified that he conducted two physical lineups and that Roberson and Broomfield both identified Green as the shooter. The trial court ruled that the photo arrays and physical lineups were not unduly suggestive and denied the defense motion.
In January 2015, Broomfield signed an affidavit for the defense saying that he had not seen the shooter and that his identifications of Green were the result of police coercion.
In May 2015, Green went to trial in Cook County Circuit Court. Lee’s fiancée, Antoinette Monique Butler, testified that on the morning of the shooting, Lee told her that he had been shot at on a prior occasion and that he would not be coming back.
Bey testified about seeing the “Bonneville-type” car speeding eastbound on Huron Street, which was a one-way street for westbound traffic only. He was shown a vehicle record of a Pontiac Bonneville and said it resembled the car that he saw.
After Bey finished testifying, the prosecution introduced into evidence a certified copy of a vehicle record showing that Green had owned a 1998 Pontiac Bonneville. The record did not specify the color of the vehicle and did not indicate when Green owned the car.
Broomfield, who by then was in a prison work-release program for a narcotics conviction, then testified. He said he had three convictions for possession of a controlled substance, one in 2007 and two on separate dates in 2012. He identified Green in court, saying he had known Green all his life. However, he denied seeing the shooting.
Broomfield said that at the time of the shooting, he was in a state aid office several blocks away, applying for food stamps. He denied telling police that at the time of the shooting, he was in a dice game near the corner of Chicago and Avers Avenues, where the shooting occurred.
He denied telling police that Green was the shooter and said that police coerced him into identifying Green. Broomfield said detectives threatened to have him fired from his job.
The prosecution was allowed to impeach Broomfield with the police reports of his prior statements implicating Green. The statements were introduced as substantive evidence as well.
Sergeant McDonagh testified that he interviewed Broomfield in May 2011 after the shooting, and that Broomfield said he was shooting dice when he saw Green shoot Lee. McDonagh said Broomfield had identified Green in a photographic lineup.
McDonagh said he had viewed the surveillance tape, and that he could not discern a face or tell the age of the Black man running in the alley.
The prosecution presented evidence that efforts to recover fingerprints from five shell casings recovered at the scene were unsuccessful. The defense and prosecution stipulated that Lee died of multiple gunshot wounds and that the shell casings were all nine-millimeter casings that were fired by the same weapon.
Detective Rodriguez testified that he interviewed Broomfield in May 2013. During that interview, Rodriguez said Broomfield identified Green as the shooter. Rodriguez said Broomfield also identified Green in a live lineup.
Neither Holmes nor Roberson testified.
The defense presented evidence that on the morning Lee left his fiancée, he said he was going to sell some marijuana to someone at the corner of Chicago and Avers Avenues, where the shooting ultimately occurred.
On May 14, 2015, the jury convicted Green of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 51 years in prison.
In December 2017, the First District Illinois Appellate Court upheld his conviction and sentence.
In December 2018, attorneys Damon Cheronis and Ryan Levitt filed a petition seeking a new trial. The motion said that a private investigator, Sergio Serritella, had discovered that while Green had owned a Bonneville, he did not purchase it until two years after the murder. Moreover, it was green–not orange or red–as Bey had described at the trial.
The petition said the vehicle’s registered owner at the time of shooting was a woman who lived in a suburb south of Chicago who had no connection to Green. The petition noted that Green’s trial defense attorney had failed to investigate the car’s ownership prior to his trial.
The petition said that in October 2018, two months earlier, the defense interviewed Broomfield, who said that he never saw the shooting and that detectives had coerced his identification of Green.
“I was high on marijuana, PCP, and ecstasy and in police custody for [possession of a controlled substance] when detectives took me to their office and pressed me for information on the murder I did not have,” Broomfield said. “I felt threatened that they were going to put a case on me and agreed to falsely identify Jaron as the person who shot Bruce. Afterward, I was picked up from work and coerced into viewing a lineup and identifying Jaron as the shooter. I was also picked up and taken before the grand jury.”
On March 24, 2022, before a hearing could be held on the motion, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office agreed to vacate the conviction. The case was dismissed and Green was released.
In March 2023, Green filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit seeking compensation from the city of Chicago.
In April 2025, Green filed a motion for a certificate of innocence, which, if granted, would allow him to seek compensation from the state of Illinois.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 05-06-2026
