Two of the biggest federal street-gang trials Chicago has seen in years are set for do-overs this fall following claims that prosecutors made undisclosed promises while securing key testimony against three men who were then tied to 11 murders.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin presides over the racketeering cases against leaders of the Four Corner Hustlers and Wicked Town street gangs. In a pair of recent rulings, he said it’d be an “understatement” to call the feds’ errors “avoidable.”
“It should not have happened,” Durkin wrote. “Whatever the characterization, the result is a disservice to the victims and their families who will be forced to endure another trial.”
The more recent of those two rulings came down Thursday, when Durkin ordered a new trial for accused Wicked Town leader Donald Lee and alleged “shooter” Torance Benson. Originally convicted in 2022 and tied to seven killings, the men are set to go on trial all over again Sept 2.
Despite a recent push by the Trump administration, prosecutors have said they won’t seek the death penalty against the pair if they’re again convicted.
Then, on Nov. 3, Durkin is set to preside over a second trial for Labar Spann. The reputed leader of the Four Corner Hustlers was originally convicted in 2021 and tied to four murders.
The new trials are a significant setback — and not just for prosecutors. In handing down his ruling in the Wicked Town case, Durkin noted that a trial of such magnitude “costs enormous judicial and public resources.” Combined, the original two trials lasted about four months.
They ended in guilty verdicts that left Spann and Lee facing mandatory life prison sentences.
Still, the convictions were undermined by revelations during follow-up sentencing preparations in 2024. Durkin wrote Thursday that the circumstances in Lee and Benson’s case were “eerily” similar to what happened in Spann’s case. There are also key differences.
Notably, the judge said “unintentional” misconduct seemed to be at play in the Wicked Town case. But in the Spann case, he wrote separately that prosecutors “wisely agreed” to a new trial.
That’s because an investigation involving “dozens of interviews and the review of thousands of documents” confirmed that a former prosecutor in that case, Peter Salib, made an “unauthorized” promise to a key witness, records show. Salib then elicited false grand jury testimony from him, according to prosecutors.
Salib’s attorney declined to comment.
John Mitchell, the former prosecutor whose conduct is at issue in the Wicked Town case, said Durkin is “likely the smartest and most fair judge” he’ll ever appear before. And he said he has “nothing but respect” for the attorneys who sought a new trial for Lee and Benson.
“But context is important,” Mitchell told the Chicago Sun-Times. In the Wicked Town case, he said, “every single witness and each of their attorneys has stated unequivocally that there were no undisclosed promises of any kind. Any suggestion to the contrary is pure fiction.”
Either way, Durkin noted in his order Thursday that both cases are being used in training at the U.S. attorney’s office as examples of “what not to do.”
A deal to testify
Prosecutors say Salib spent years leading the feds’ pursuit of Spann and the Four Corner Hustlers, a group of West Side robbers, drug dealers and killers whose crimes date back to the mid-1990s.
A crucial turning point in that investigation came Sept. 14, 2017. That’s when accused Four Corner Hustlers enforcer Sammie Booker was due to testify before a grand jury that was just about to expire.
Booker apparently got cold feet.
Booker was unhappy with a deal he’d already cut, documented in a plea letter, in which he expected to receive a prison sentence of 25 to 35 years for his own crimes, which included murder. That’s according to Spann defense attorneys Steven Hunter and Mina Zardkoohi.
“It was at this time, with the clock winding down, and Booker on the fence, that Salib told Booker that he would recommend 25 years at his sentencing,” they wrote in a court filing last fall. They said Salib also promised to remove details of a murder from Booker’s testimony.
“Booker claims the two men shook hands over the deal,” the defense attorneys wrote.
But the process described by Hunter and Zardkoohi also seemed extremely tense.
They described Booker holding a pen over the signature line of a document for about 20 minutes. And Salib recalled that securing the Spann indictment was “the most stressful thing he had ever gone through in his life,” according to the defense attorneys.
Booker eventually testified, and the grand jury handed up an indictment against Spann and others. But it did so after Booker testified no promises had been made to him other than the 25-to-35-year sentencing range in the plea letter, records show.
Prosecutors now concede that testimony was false.
They also say no one else at the U.S. attorney’s office knew about Salib’s promise until a March 2024 meeting ahead of a planned sentencing hearing for Booker. Hunter and Zardkoohi suggest otherwise.
They said an attorney who previously represented Booker mentioned the promise to another prosecutor on the case and sent a letter to the U.S. attorney’s office ahead of an earlier planned sentencing hearing for Booker in 2022.
The letter allegedly said that, “after hours of back and forth, Mr. Salib promised Mr. Booker that if Mr. Booker testified before the grand jury and followed through with his cooperation, Mr. Salib would ask for a 25-year sentence.”
Prosecutors say the letter went unread until 2024 because Booker’s sentencing was repeatedly delayed. He is still awaiting sentencing.
Salib left the U.S. attorney’s office in 2021, records show. In a recent court filing, his attorney wrote that he is not “currently engaged in the practice of law.”
Spann asked Durkin to throw out his indictment completely. The judge declined, but he said “a new trial is a necessary remedy for and consequence of the government’s unforced error.”
‘A promise is a promise’
Shortly after the revelations in the Spann case, emails surfaced that had been sent by then-prosecutor Mitchell to attorneys involved in the case of Lee, Benson and the West Side Wicked Town gang that had been accused of “cold, calculated and premeditated” killings.
In a May 2022 email, Mitchell allegedly relayed his expectation that, “if the sentencing were tomorrow,” prosecutors would recommend a 30-year prison sentence for Deshawn Morgan, a Wicked Town associate who pleaded guilty and testified against Lee and Benson.
Mitchell also wrote that, “we reserve the right to reconsider.”
Morgan was sentenced last August to 32 years in prison.
Prosecutors disclosed Mitchell’s email to Lee and Benson’s attorneys after sentencing preparations were underway for their clients earlier in 2024, records show. The defense lawyers say “the flood gates opened” after that disclosure, and they learned that Mitchell made similar comments to others who testified against the men.
Mitchell left the U.S. attorney’s office in 2023 and is now in private practice, records show. He told the Chicago Sun-Times one of his “most rewarding experiences” as a prosecutor was meeting several mothers of the “more than 40 victims who were murdered or maimed by the Wicked Town gang” and making sure they knew “the federal government cared.”
The former prosecutor said he was disappointed there will be a new trial for Lee and Benson, “because it will unnecessarily delay both accountability for these defendants and justice for the moms of the gang’s many victims.”
Prosecutors objected to a new trial for Lee and Benson, insisting none of Mitchell’s emails contained an “unqualified promise.” In his order, Durkin wrote that he believed “the government’s misconduct here was unintentional.”
But the judge also wrote that Mitchell’s comment about recommending a 30-year sentence for Morgan “constitutes a promise.”
“A promise is a promise,” Durkin wrote, “whether qualified or not, and Mitchell’s ‘commitment’ to Morgan was a promise that should have been disclosed.”