NBC5 ordered to keep witness notes
A Cook County judge Friday ordered NBC5 to preserve all notes and footage related to an interview with Anne Lockett, the former girlfriend of the man set to stand trial next year in the 1993 Brown's Chicken murders.
Lockett, whose tip led police to arrest James Degorski and his pal Juan Luna in 2002, was a star witness in Luna's trial last spring. Luna was convicted and is serving a life sentence.
Lockett's interview aired on NBC5 Thursday and Friday, months before Degorski's scheduled February trial. Most of the interview repeated themes of Lockett's testimony in the Luna trial.
Meanwhile, prosecutors in the Degorski case are appealing an October ruling that bars his videotaped statements to police from being played for jurors.
In appealing the decision, prosecutors acknowledged tossing the tape would notably impair their case at trial.
Douglas Godfrey, a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, concurred, saying not being able to use that video "hurts a lot" and noting jurors tend to put a lot of stock in such statements.
In contrast, Godfrey said it's unlikely Lockett's TV interview will affect the case.
The biggest concern would be its potential to taint the jury pool, Godfrey said, but he added the crime is so notorious most people already know a lot about it anyway.
"It would be shocking if you found an adult in Cook County who didn't know about the Brown's massacre," he said, "and it doesn't matter. As long as a juror could be fair and impartial."
In the segment, Lockett, now a married mother, said Degorski phoned her after the crime and he and Luna told her what they'd done.
Degorski also told her he'd kill her if she told anyone, she said. She held the secret in for nine years before talking.
"I didn't want to deal with the fear of what would happen if I did. What if they would come and try to kill me? And what if they didn't get convicted? These are all things that would run through my mind," Lockett said.
Lockett also said that she hoped the families would understand why she waited so long to come forward.
"I hope one day they understand why I waited as long as I did, but they are the ones I came forward for," Lockett said.
But "she doesn't say a lot (in the interview), and I don't know that it's going to make a lot of difference" in the end, Richard Kling, a Kent Law professor, said after the first night of the TV segment.
Lockett, like everyone else affiliated with the case, now is under a court-issued gag order that prohibits her from talking with the media. That order wasn't formally read until Friday, though a similar one applied in the spring during Luna's murder trial.