Jury convicts gang member in shooting of federal agent on South Side last year

Over the past year and a half, South Side gang member Ernesto Godinez has seen one older brother slain by rivals and another sent to federal prison for 4 ½ years on a drug conviction.

Godinez, a purported “chief”of the Almighty Latin Saints, is himself now facing at least a decade behind bars after a federal jury on Monday convicted him of shooting a federal agent he’d mistaken for a rival last year.

The jury deliberated less than three hours before finding Godinez guilty of one count each of assaulting an agent with a deadly weapon and discharging a firearm in furtherance of a crime stemming from the May 2018 shooting in the gang-infested Back of the Yards neighborhood.

Dressed in a dark suit and wearing thick eyeglasses, Godinez, 29, buried his face in his hands and cried as the verdict was read.

Across the courtroom, Kevin Crump, the agent for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives wounded in the shooting, received handshakes, pats on the back and other gestures of support from colleagues who packed U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber’s courtroom throughout the five-day trial.

Godinez faces up to 20 years in prison on the first count, plus a mandatory minimum 10-year term for the second count to be served consecutively. Leinenweber set sentencing for Sept. 19.

Speaking to reporters after the verdict, U.S. Attorney John Lausch said that even though the actual shooting wasn’t caught on video, his team was able to build a strong circumstantial case through surveillance footage, ballistics, ShotSpotter technology and other evidence.

“Piecing all that together takes a lot of work, but it’s the type of thing that we need to do in order to hold people accountable for their shootings in these neighborhoods,” Lausch said in the lobby of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.

Godinez’s attorney, Lawrence Hyman, said he was disappointed with the jury’s findings and believed there was “enough reasonable doubt” for an acquittal.

Prosecutors alleged that as a ranking member of the Latin Saints, Godinez was “posting up” — a gang rule to watch out for rivals — when he fired off five quick shots at a group of men who were acting suspiciously on his block. The plainclothes agents were part of a task force placing court-approved tracking devices on the cars of suspected gang members.

“It was an ambush,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Eichenseer said in his closing argument. “He was on the lookout for rivals. He was protecting Saints territory.”

One of the bullets fired by Godinez struck Crump in the head, entering his neck before exiting between his eyes, according to prosecutors. Crump, who needed several reconstructive surgeries including steel mesh and titanium implants to repair the damage, testified last week about the ordeal.

Godinez’s attorneys acknowledged he’s a member of the Latin Saints gang and was out on the street the night of the shooting but said prosecutors didn’t prove he was the gunman. No gun was ever recovered, and no forensic evidence linked Godinez to the agent’s shooting.

“Being in a gang is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Hyman said in his closing remarks to the jury. “Ernesto Godinez did not fire that weapon. He is not accountable for this horrible act.”

The agent’s shooting took place amid stepped-up efforts by ATF and Chicago police to investigate a rash of gang-related rifle shootings in the Back of the Yards. The Chicago Tribune reported that more than 140 people were shot — 50 of them fatally — from fall 2016 to the end of 2017 by gang members wielding rifles as their use spread across the South and Southwest sides.

The evidence in Godinez’s trial centered on surveillance camera footage that captured his movements running to and from a narrow gangway on the 4300 block of South Hermitage Avenue at the time the shots rang out. The footage did not show anyone actually firing a gun, however.

In his closing argument, Eichenseer said the cameras — as well as Godinez’s text messages with a girlfriend — showed that he had “posted up” in the neighborhood looking for rivals when several suspicious-looking men in hooded sweatshirts began circling his block in a brown Chevrolet Impala.

Feeling that “something was about to go down,” Godinez sprinted through an alley to his home and retrieved a gun, then ran to the gangway knowing that it offered perfect cover, Eichenseer said.

As the agents walked down the street a half a block away, Godinez fired off five shots in their direction in a little over two seconds, then ran back to his house and texted his girlfriend to come pick him up, Eichenseer said.

When he got in the car, Godinez was sweating and out of breath.

"I feel good. F--- that flake," he allegedly said to the girlfriend, using a street term for a member of an opposing gang.

Eichenseer said the remark made clear that Godinez thought at the time he’d “done his job as a Saint” and maybe even “gotten revenge” for the killing of his eldest brother a few months earlier allegedly by gang rivals wielding a high-powered rifle.

Godinez was arrested on a criminal complaint three days after the shooting. Another older brother, Rodrigo Godinez, was arrested the same day and charged in a separate complaint with cocaine distribution.

Rodrigo Godinez pleaded guilty earlier this year and was sentenced last month to 55 months in prison, court records show. His attorneys wrote in a sentencing memo that he had been wounded in four separate gang-related shootings from age 18 to 25.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @jmetr22b

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