At about 11 p.m. on October 14, 2014, 27-year-old Sean McClendon and his friend, Emmanual Poe, were at a barbecue at a home on East 78th Street and South Shore Drive in Chicago, Illinois. They decided to leave to pick up a friend who lived about four miles away at East 99th Street and South Yates Avenue. Poe was driving and McClendon was in the passenger seat.
When they arrived at the friend’s house, Poe backed the vehicle into the driveway. At about the same time, a car pulled up, and two men emerged and came toward them. Poe, worried that the men might be intending to rob them, pulled out and sped off.
The two men were actually Chicago police officers in plainclothes who were responding to a 911 call of shots fired three blocks away at East 99th Street and South Hoxie Avenue. They jumped back into their unmarked car and called for assistance. They lost track of the vehicle, but a police helicopter located it and followed.
During the pursuit, a dispatcher asked the officers why they were following the car. One said they had seen the car at “a house known for shooting.” The officers also conceded that the car and whoever was in it were “probably not” involved in the shooting on Hoxie Avenue.
Poe and McClendon pulled into a parking lot behind the building on East 78th Street where the barbeque was being held. Police cars followed, directed by the helicopter.
The first officers to arrive were Milot Cadichon and his partner, Donald Smith. Within minutes, Poe and McClendon were in handcuffs and a handgun had been recovered from under a couch on the back porch of 3008 East 78th Street, the home where the barbecue was being hosted by a man named Kenneth Ross.
Ultimately, Cadichon offered two different accounts of what happened, casting doubt on his version of the events.
McClendon was charged with being an armed habitual criminal based on the recovery of the gun and his prior felony convictions for burglary and illegal possession of a firearm.
Prior to trial, his defense attorney moved to suppress the gun from evidence. At a hearing on the motion, Cadichon testified that he and Smith pulled into the parking lot right behind the vehicle and saw Poe get out of the driver’s side and McClendon get out of the passenger side. Cadichon said Poe and McClendon ran to the back porch where McClendon dropped an object that looked like a gun. Another officer picked up the object, which was a handgun, from behind the couch on the porch.
Cook County Circuit Court Judge Stanley Sacks denied the motion, ruling that McClendon had no standing to object to a search of the porch.
McClendon went to trial in July 2016. The jury was shown a video recording of the chase that was taken from the helicopter. The video showed that by the time Smith and Cadichon entered the parking lot, Poe and McClendon were on the porch.
Consequently, Cadichon changed his testimony. He now said that McClendon and Poe were on the porch and that no one else was in the parking lot. He admitted that they were probably not involved in the shooting on Hoxie Avenue, but he was relying on the report for pointing his gun at McClendon.
“I saw [McClendon] pull something out of his shirt and he placed it in the back of the couch,” Cadichon said. “It was a dark blue metal steel object which was shaped like a gun. He was in front of the couch and he pulled the couch away from the wall a little bit and he placed the object he was holding behind the couch.”
Cadichon said he heard a “clink” as the object hit the wooden porch. He said he directed another officer to the spot, and the officer retrieved the pistol.
Officer Bryant McDermott and officer Robert McHale were the two undercover officers who first approached the car containing Poe and McClendon. McDermott said they pursued the vehicle because Poe and McClendon had ducked down in their seats when the unmarked car rolled past the driveway. McDermott testified that at the police station, McClendon admitted he had the gun because people were after him.
Poe testified that although he had a suspended driver’s license, he drove the vehicle, which belonged to the mother of McClendon’s child, because McClendon had been drinking and he had not. He said that just as he parked the car in their friend’s driveway, he saw a car pull up and two men rush at the car. He said they were wearing jeans and white t-shirts. He couldn’t tell whether they were police, but because he had a suspended license, decided to drive back to the barbecue. He said he had pushed the doorbell just before police arrived and arrested them. Poe said he did not have a gun.
McClendon testified similarly. He said they stopped when police yelled, “Freeze!” They turned to face the officers and put out their hands to be cuffed. He said he did not have a gun. He denied telling officer McDermott that he had a gun or that anyone was after him.
On July 13, 2016, the jury convicted McClendon of the charge of being an armed habitual criminal. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.
On March 7, 2022, the First District Illinois Appellate Court reversed the conviction and ordered the case dismissed. The court ruled that the seizure of the gun was the result of an illegal arrest. The court said that Cadichon saw the empty vehicle in the parking lot and saw Poe and McClendon on the porch.
“At that point, no officer claimed to have seen McClendon or Poe engage in any criminal activity or at the scene of any crime,” the court said. “Slouching in a car seat as an unmarked car passes does not support an inference of criminal activity…Because the officers acknowledged that the [vehicle] probably had nothing to do with the shots on Hoxie Avenue, those shots do not justify the [arrest].”
The court also ruled that McDermott’s testimony that McClendon had admitted to having the gun also should have been suppressed.
“McClendon has shown that if his attorney had argued that illegal [arrest] required suppression of the gun and testimony about statements obtained as a result of the illegal [arrest], the trial court should have granted the motion to suppress,” the court held. “Without the gun and testimony about statements, the State had no case to present against McClendon.”
The case was dismissed on remand. On June 13, 2022, McClendon was released from prison.
In November 2022, McClendon’s attorney, Joel Flaxman, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Cadichon and other police officers involved in the case.
The lawsuit noted that in November 2019, Cadichon had pled guilty in U.S. District Court in Chicago to accepting more than $10,000 in bribes from Richard Burton, the owner of an attorney referral business, in exchange for supplying hundreds of traffic reports. Burton used the reports to solicit accident victims for attorneys. Cadichon and another police officer, Kevin Tate, who also was charged, were accused of providing the crash reports from 2015 to 2017. Cadichon was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Tate and Burton also pled guilty and were each sentenced to a year in prison.
During the pending of the lawsuit, Kenneth Ross, the man who was hosting the barbecue, testified during a deposition that the gun was his. He said that he often kept it behind the couch when he was wearing loose-fitting clothes such as sweatpants. He testified that he had put the gun behind the couch during the barbecue.
Cadichon’s partner, Donald Smith, who did not testify at McClendon’s trial, testified in a deposition as part of the federal litigation that he didn’t see McClendon with a gun. He testified that during his 22-year career as a police officer, he had never seen anyone toss a gun behind a piece of furniture on a porch, and that if he had, he would remember it.
Cadichon also testified in a deposition and admitted that he had testified falsely that he saw Poe and McClendon get out of the vehicle.
Flaxman asked during the deposition, “Why did you testify falsely about seeing them get out of the car?”
“I don’t remember that day why I testified the way I did,” Cadichon replied.
In March 2024, Flaxman filed a petition for a certificate of innocence for McClendon. On November 13, 2024, the petition was granted and Flaxman then filed a claim for compensation from the state of Illinois.
In October 2024, the city of Chicago settled the federal lawsuit for $150,000. In February 2025, the Illinois Court of Claims awarded McClendon $156,400 in compensation.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 06-03-2025
Last Update Date: 06-03-2025
