Sheridan Gorman was 18 years old, a freshman at Loyola University Chicago, and walking with friends near Tobey Prinz Beach in Rogers Park when she was shot and killed in March. On Monday, the man charged with killing her did not walk into a Cook County courtroom to face a judge. He appeared on a Zoom screen, from a hospital bed.
Jose Medina-Medina, a Venezuelan national who is in the country illegally, has been in custody since his arrest in March and has pleaded not guilty to murder. His defense attorney told the court he had been admitted to a local hospital after suffering a seizure over the weekend, Fox News reports. The judge ordered him to appear in person at his next hearing if he is physically able to.
Picture the two images side by side, because the contrast is the whole story. An 18-year-old who will never finish her freshman year. And the man accused of ending it, dialing into his own murder case the way the rest of us dial into a staff meeting.
Medina-Medina’s attorneys have argued repeatedly that he suffers seizures and other medical problems stemming from a 2018 shooting in Colombia in which they say he was shot in the head, and a Cook County Sheriff’s Office jail photo shows the head injury. The defense told the judge it is still waiting on more information about his condition before deciding which pretrial motions to file — which is another way of saying the calendar keeps sliding.
Prosecutors said they have handed over additional evidence, including most of the DNA testing completed on the firearm recovered at the scene. Trace evidence testing is still underway and more DNA analysis may be requested. Medina-Medina also faces a separate case accusing him of possessing a homemade shank while in custody; in that matter prosecutors are still awaiting subpoenaed body-camera footage and hospital surveillance video. The case was continued to September 3 for another status hearing. Gorman’s family did not attend Monday’s hearing.
He is entitled to the presumption of innocence and to competent medical care, and no honest person should want it otherwise. But notice what nobody in that courtroom had to explain: how a Venezuelan national with a bullet wound from a 2018 shooting in Colombia came to be walking free in Chicago at all. That question has an answer, and the answer is policy — a border that was treated as a suggestion and a city that advertised itself as a place where status would never be checked.
Sheridan Gorman’s family is now measuring their lives in continuance dates. September 3, and then whatever comes after that, and then whatever comes after that. This is the part of the sanctuary debate that never fits in a statistic, and it is the part that ought to decide it: a courtroom in Chicago, a college kid who is not coming back, and a defendant who could not be bothered to show up in the room.
Source: foxnews.com