Murder conviction of man who killed Cmdr. Paul Bauer upheld by appellate court

Shomari Legghette listens to attorneys during closing statements in March 2020 during his murder trial at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse. (Pool photo by Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)

A state appellate court has upheld the murder conviction of Shomari Legghette, who gunned down Chicago Police Cmdr. Paul Bauer nearly six years ago in a Loop stairwell during a foot pursuit. 

The three-justice panel rejected all of Legghette’s arguments on appeal, including that the trial judge had improperly denied a motion to allow the defense to admit evidence of allegations that Bauer had used unreasonable force and/or racist language during arrests on three occasions in the 1990s. 

Legghette, 50, had also claimed he was improperly denied a mistrial over comments the jury heard a police officer make in body-worn camera footage shown at his trial and that the court wrongly denied his motion for new defense attorneys. 

All three justices ruled against Legghette to affirm his conviction in Wednesday’s order.

Jurors took three hours to find Legghette guilty on all six of the counts he faced at his March 2020 trial, including first-degree murder. He was convicted just days before states began to implement shutdown orders to prevent the spread of COVID-19. 

That same month, all jury trials in the Cook County Circuit Court were suspended, an order that would last for more than a year as the courts moved largely to videoconferencing services to conduct business. 

A button adorns the lapel of a Chicago Police officer at the funeral for Cmdr. Paul Bauer in 2018. (Sun-Times file)

Legghette was sentenced to life in prison the following October. 

“There was nothing fair about this prosecution,” he said during the sentencing hearing and pledged to appeal. 

Bauer was shot on Feb. 13, 2018, as he struggled with Legghette over a gun in a stairwell outside the Thompson Center.

The police commander had pursued Legghette into the stairwell after hearing a police radio broadcast his description as other officers chased him through the Loop to question him in connection with a shooting on Lower Wacker Drive several days earlier.

Legghette was immediately taken into custody and was wearing body armor and had a pistol with an extended clip holding 30 rounds of ammunition.

At the time, Bauer was the first officer shot to death in the line of duty since 2011.