Seventeen years old. Sixteen gunshots. Thirteen months before a murder charge.

Voters in Cook County, Illinois, will go to the polls in the state’s primary tomorrow and will pick a candidate to run for Cook County State’s Attorney. The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, as well as many prominent Democrats, have endorsed candidate Kim Foxx over incumbent Anita Alvarez. All have citied Alvarez’s slow handing of the Laquan McDonald case.

17-year-old Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke in October 2014. Alvarez took over a year to charge Van Dyke with McDonald’s murder.

Almost 45 years before McDonald was killed, Chicago police with the involvement of the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation killed two black men in an apartment on Chicago’s west side. A Cook County State’s Attorney would play a controversial role in that case too.

In the early morning hours of Dec. 4, 1969, a team of police officers organized by Cook County State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan stormed an apartment ostensibly in search of illegal weapons. The apartment was the residence of Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, and it served as the chapter’s headquarters. Nearly 100 shots were fired. When the haze of gun smoke cleared, Fred Hampton and another Panther, Mark Clark, lay dead. The raiding officers had riddled them with bullets.

Many viewed Hampton’s death as an assassination, but Hanrahan steadfastly defended the raid and the actions of his officers. He cited alleged bullet holes in a doorjamb as evidence that his officers had been fired upon by the Panthers. These holes were later revealed to be merely exposed nail heads.

A federal investigation found that of the dozens of shell casings collected at the site of the raid, only one could have come from a Panther’s gun. The rest had been from guns used by the raiding officers.

Hanrahan was eventually indicted on charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice related to the raid. He was acquitted of all charges, but public anger surrounding the raid cost him the support of his political allies as well as his 1972 re-election bid. He would never again serve elected office.

In this clip from The Murder of Fred Hampton, a 1971 documentary by The Film Group, directed by Howard Alk, and produced by Mike Gray, we hear Hanrahan defending the raid, followed by a news report parroting Hanrahan’s version of events, then Panthers’ attorney Skip Andrew speaking at Hampton’s funeral.

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