'Let's do this job': Lone black juror gives inside view of Van Dyke deliberations

CHICAGO - When deliberations began in one of the biggest trials in Cook County, Ill., history, juror Charlene Cooke says she was certain Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke was guilty of first-degree murder.

Gathered around the long cherry wood table in the nondescript jury room, Cooke was unable to erase the image from her head of Van Dyke continuing to fire as 17-year-old Laquan McDonald lay twitching on the pavement. But not everyone agreed. Hours passed without a unanimous decision before Cooke and her fellow jurors were sequestered for the night at a suburban hotel.

The next morning, an agreement was struck to convict Van Dyke of second-degree murder, finding he acted in fear for his life, even if that fear was unreasonable. But before the verdict was signed, another juror suddenly hesitated, and the deliberations grew heated, according to Cooke. The lone black juror on the 12-member panel, Cooke said she confronted the woman, who had grown emotional about Van Dyke and his family.

"Let's not make this a race thing or a sympathy thing," Cooke recalled telling her fellow juror, a white woman. "We're talking about a man, not even a white man, but a man who used his authority the wrong way. He took somebody's life, and it was overkill."

Then, Cooke made it clear that she wasn't backing down.

"I told everyone, 'Kick your shoes off, get comfortable because we're not going anywhere.'"

In the first in-depth, one-on-one interview with a juror since Van Dyke's historic conviction, Cooke told the Chicago Tribune it was important to her to give the officer a fair trial, saying her preacher father raised her to keep an open mind about people and "look at the whole picture."

"Everything is too much about black