Three members of a South Side gang were found guilty of racketeering conspiracy Wednesday after a lengthy trial in which prosecutors accused them of acting as “urban hunters,” terrorizing residents and ruling territory in the Englewood neighborhood through unrelenting waves of gun violence.
Reputed “Goonie Boss” gang faction leader Romeo “O-Dog” Blackman and two alleged henchmen, Terrance “T” Smith and Jolicious “Jo Jo” Turman, were convicted after five weeks of testimony in the sweeping trial. Blackman and Smith face mandatory life sentences, while Turman faces a maximum of 20 years.
In all, the indictment alleged the Goonies were responsible for 10 slayings and six attempted murders in an 18-month span from 2014 to 2016.
Jurors returned a mixed verdict on the indictment’s other charges. Blackman was found guilty on three out of four counts of murder and convicted of three counts of attempted murder. Smith was convicted on two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, but acquitted on an assault charge. And Turman was found not guilty on one count of murder.
Jurors were expected to return Thursday morning for a second phase of the case. They will be tasked, in part, with determining whether the defendants’ actions were “cold and calculated” in committing the killings.
Over more than a month of testimony, jurors watched killings play out on surveillance video, and saw social media posts where Goonie members allegedly kept a tally of victims and “rejoiced” in the death of rivals. And they’ve heard testimony from a parade of cooperating witnesses who described each member’s alleged role in the organization, including one nicknamed “Steph Curry” for his long-distance accuracy — only with a pistol, not a basketball.
Unlike more traditional street gangs that were highly organized and focused on protecting drug turf, the Goonies allegedly engaged in a shockingly petty cycle of violence with rivals, where shooting at “opps” was an almost daily routine and killings were bragged about on Facebook and other social media.
Deliberations were somewhat rocky. Jurors told the judge Wednesday afternoon that they had reached a stalemate, but were instructed to keep deliberating; the verdict was reached a few hours after that.
And deliberations had to start over from scratch last week after one juror was dismissed.
In her closing argument last month, Assistant U.S. Attorney Maureen McCurry said Blackman, who joined the gang as a young teen, literally “shot his way to the top,” turning the Goonies into a feared element in a neighborhood already beset by violence.
“The more (Blackman) shot, the more he was respected and feared,” McCurry said. “He put in a lot of work to get where he had to go.”
Lawyers for the defendants, meanwhile, said the government’s evidence on the specific shootings was thin, lacking in forensic corroboration, and based in large part on cooperating witnesses who testified against their fellow gang members in exchange for leniency or even immunity from prosecution.
Attorney Christopher Grohman, who represents Blackman, called it a “tough case” that was riddled with reasonable doubt, not because Blackman and his co-defendants are great guys, but because the evidence of a criminal enterprise — which prosecutors have to prove existed in order to sustain a racketeering conviction — was simply not there.
“I think the evidence is frankly overwhelming that Romeo was in a gang, that he had guns, that he was out there probably shooting at people and telling other people to shoot,” Grohman said. “But he’s not charged with that.”
That argument was echoed by attorneys for Turman and Smith, who said the Goonie gang brought in little in the way of money and appeared to serve no overarching purpose such as drug trafficking, which is a common hallmark of street gangs.
The Goonies trial is the latest in a string of major racketeering cases brought by the U.S. attorney’s office aimed at the leaders of Chicago’s splintered gang factions that prosecutors say are driving the city’s rampant gun violence.
In November, a federal jury found the reputed leader of Chicago’s Wicked Town gang faction and one of his top lieutenants guilty of racketeering conspiracy involving a string of murders, shootings, robberies and narcotics trafficking on the West Side stretching back two decades.
Later this year, five alleged members of the South Side’s “O Block” gang faction are set to go to trial on a racketeering conspiracy indictment accusing them of a pattern of violence that includes the downtown slaying of Chicago rapper FBG Duck in 2020.
mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com
scharles@chicagotribune.com
This story has been updated to reflect the correct potential sentence for Jolicious Turman.
