This much is more or less undisputed: In March 2013, Sanchez Mixon was beaten on a Green Line platform in broad daylight.
It was a grisly attack, Cook County prosecutors have said. They allege Anthony Jackson knocked Mixon to the ground and stomped his head repeatedly while onlookers begged him to stop. All of it was captured on CTA surveillance footage. Mixon was pronounced dead less than an hour later.
Anthony Jackson has long claimed self-defense, saying Mixon threatened him physically and verbally, and on the first day of his murder trial in 2015, his brother stepped in to help represent him. The entrance of attorney George Jackson III made it a case of brother defending brother — an unusual occurrence even at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, a courthouse known for high-stakes drama.
Despite his brother’s help, Anthony Jackson was convicted, and since then matters have only gotten stranger.
George Jackson III, a former federal prosecutor, blamed a co-counsel for ineffectively representing his brother and was able to get the conviction overturned. But in the years since, he has been found in contempt of court multiple times; been reported to the state disciplinary commission twice; and was, for a time, kicked off his brother’s case and barred from entering the courthouse altogether.
Throughout, the lawyer Jackson has submitted a barrage of filings, some of them striking racial tones and some of them strangely sexual, filled with allegations of collusion and conspiracy, and all pointing to a deep belief that powerful people are working together to keep his brother behind bars.
The case is set for trial once again on Monday. On some previous trial dates, George Jackson, mired in controversy as he fights for his brother’s freedom, has simply failed to show up in court. But this time, Jackson told the judge, he will be there.
An early win fades
After Anthony’s conviction, Jackson launched an aggressive push to get the verdict tossed out. It took two attempts before multiple different judges until November 2016, when Judge James Linn granted Anthony a new trial on the grounds that his previous attorney was ineffective.
It was a nearly unheard-of effort; in general, attorneys are only given one chance to win a new trial before sentencing.
But the issues were clear-cut, Linn found. Anthony’s previous attorney had since had his law license suspended, and had never tried to raise the matter of Mixon’s criminal and mental health history, which might have bolstered Anthony’s claims of self-defense.
However, in the months before Linn granted a new trial, “George Jackson began, from time to time, acting erratically, lacking civility, raising his voice, getting personally insulting to the court and to the State’s Attorney’s office,” Linn said in court a few months later.
The matter came to a head in 2017 after George filed a violent and lurid court document in the midst of an effort to get the case in front of a different judge.
He was requesting an investigation into what he called Linn’s inappropriate communication with prosecutors, but much of it was devoted to a lengthy hypothetical about a pedophile meth dealer named Guy “Meatman” Black.
Jackson devoted nearly two full pages to describing, in disturbing detail, the fictional rape of a young girl while her mother looked on.
The filing kick-started a chain reaction: Jackson was held in contempt of court. Prosecutors reported him to the state Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission. Ultimately, Linn kicked him off his brother’s case altogether.
“George Jackson, what he’s doing now, is not practicing law,” Linn said in May 2017. “He is not capable of practicing law. I do believe that he’s got personal issues, he’s got problems, he’s paranoid. I think he’s acting in bad faith. I think he’s acting hatefully. Whether he’s capable of practicing law at all is to be decided by some other forum.”
Jackson filed an appeal challenging Linn’s decision removing him from the case. In December 2017, he sent poinsettias and a strange note to one of the prosecutors who had handled his brother’s case, referencing, among other things, “contained erotica” and “volcanic passion.”
The Cook County state’s attorney’s office went to court for a restraining order against him, saying they feared Jackson was unstable and could be dangerous.
Jackson did not show up in court to answer the allegations; he later would claim that he was not properly served with papers. Since he didn’t show, prosecutors won the restraining order by default, according to court records.
And so Jackson, a longtime attorney, found himself prohibited from setting foot at the Leighton Criminal Court Building.
Almost a year and a half later, an appellate court ruled in his favor, however, saying Linn overstepped his boundaries when he booted Jackson from the case.
Still, he was left in an odd position: defending his brother in a building a judge had restricted him from entering.
The case stalled out. Ultimately, the restraining order was modified such that Jackson could enter the building, but only if escorted by Cook County sheriffs.
That restriction was particularly painful, George Jackson complained to Judge Ursula Walowski, who is currently presiding over the case.
“I can’t represent him under these circumstances. I can’t represent him being treated like I’m a freaking slave,” he said. “I am an officer of the court, I am a lawyer … but I come here and I’m treated like the N-word.”
More accusations
Back on his brother’s case, Jackson filed a flurry of paperwork with variations on one broad theme: that he has uncovered dire wrongdoing on the part of judges and prosecutors, who in retaliation are trying to cover it up and frame Anthony for murder.
To the extent that those claims of wrongdoing have been addressed, they don’t appear to hold much water.
For example, Jackson claims prosecutors were withholding evidence about Sanchez Mixon’s alleged history of serious mental health issues. In the process of arguing for a new trial, Jackson said he found records supporting his claim that Mixon suffered from mental health issues — records that could strengthen Anthony’s claims of self-defense. Withholding evidence favorable to a defendant would be a constitutional violation.
But prosecutors said they had no knowledge of some of those records until Jackson turned them over in court during his argument for a new trial. Linn made it clear that even if prosecutors had withheld that information before Anthony’s first trial, that conviction had been thrown out and they were starting anew. Linn also signed an order giving both prosecutors and defense access to Mixon’s protected health records.
And in the years since, Jackson has apparently made no effort to admit any of the records as evidence at Anthony’s future trial.
He has repeatedly characterized the restraining order, which has since expired, as a “modern day Emmett Till saga,” and points to it as evidence of authorities’ collusion against him. In particular, he said, he regretted ever submitting to the sheriff’s escort.
“Ordering a Black Man in Cook County to voluntarily submit to being placed in custody is akin to ordering a Jewish man to ‘Take this train to mandatory summer camp,’” he wrote in an unsuccessful 2019 bid to remove the Cook County state’s attorney’s office from prosecuting the case.
Formal complaints
Jackson has been reported to the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission twice in connection with his brother’s case. Such reports are generally not public, but two claims, both from the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, were revealed as part of other public court proceedings.
Thus far, the ARDC has taken no action against Jackson, according to their website. Claims of misconduct against attorneys are kept confidential until after the ARDC’s investigation is complete and formal complaints are filed.
Attorneys have in the past been disciplined for outlandish behavior. Perhaps the most prominent example is Joel Brodsky, former attorney for Drew Peterson, whose law license was suspended for making “baseless, vitriolic claims” and his overall “allegedly disruptive behavior” in other cases.
A spokesman for the ARDC declined to confirm, deny or comment on any claims against Jackson, saying that investigations of such grievances are confidential.
‘We’re going to try again’
Since Jackson’s return to the case, it has proceeded in fits and starts.
A jury trial was set for December 2019; Jackson did not show up in court for hours, then said he did not have all the records he needed for trial. Then COVID-19 hit, delaying the case further as courts had to figure out how to operate safely during a pandemic.
Jackson even petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court on his brother’s behalf, saying the state’s pandemic-related suspension of speedy-trial deadlines was unconstitutional. That bid was unsuccessful.
Recent court proceedings have often gone one of two ways: Either Jackson would fail to show up in court — particularly on dates when the case was set for trial — or he would file mountains of paperwork reiterating his allegations of prejudice and conspiracy against his brother.
And last month, Jackson’s arguments got him held in contempt of court twice over. One instance was for a hearing in which he urged Walowski to give him the same respect she would to a white or Jewish man, and accused her of being a cheater with “utter pathetic lowlife nonsense of racism” in her courtroom. Another was for a lurid recent court filing, in which he criticized a female prosecutor’s body in explicit terms.
He was ordered to appear in court earlier this month to answer to the contempt charges and then proceed to another jury trial. But he showed up an hour and a half late, after Walowski had released the potential jurors.
She held him in contempt of court yet again. Two days later, she reset the trial date for Monday. Jackson said he would be there.
If the trial proceeds, jurors would be expected to see the surveillance footage of Mixon’s beating, and hear from eyewitnesses who identified Anthony as the assailant. Jackson is again expected to argue his brother was defending himself on that “L” platform in 2013.
Unclear is whether they would hear anything about Mixon’s alleged mental health issues, records of which Jackson claims to have unearthed in the course of investigating the case.
In general, defense attorneys must specifically request to introduce that type of evidence at trial, and Jackson has never done so in the years since Anthony Jackson’s conviction was overturned.
Regardless, George Jackson said he would show up for his brother’s next trial Monday.
The judge would see everyone then with new jurors ready to go, she said. “We’re going to try again.”
Reached by phone Wednesday, Jackson declined to comment on the substance of the allegations against his brother, saying it would not be appropriate to discuss litigation before it happens.
But he did say that Walowski’s order holding him in contempt for his comments at the hearing “underscores the dynamics involved in this case.”
“A white woman had the undaunted temerity to hold a much decorated, highly respected former president of the federal bar association in Chicago in criminal contempt of court … simply because I talked about the disparity of people of color, brown and Black people, Black and Hispanic are treated so disparately by the Cook County criminal court system,” he said.
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Former federal prosecutor defends his own brother in murder case, but behavior works against him - Chicago Tribune
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