[Ppnews] Burge Report on systemic police torture in Chicago

Thu May 17 11:12:14 EDT 2007

  Attached is the torture report, endorsed by 212 
organizations and individuals active in the areas 
of human rights, racial and criminal justice, and 
civil rights, entitled: REPORT ON THE FAILURE OF 
SPECIAL PROSECUTORS EDWARD J. EGAN AND ROBERT D. 
BOYLE TO FAIRLY INVESTIGATE SYSTEMIC POLICE 
TORTURE IN CHICAGO, that we released on April 
24th. The Report and Appendices are 
attached.  The release received very good 
coverage and we hope that the agencies to whom it 
is addressed will take appropriate action. It 
appears that there may be a hearing before the 
Cook County Board on June 13th, and 
African-American aldermen are planning to 
introduce an ordinance calling for a hearing 
before the Cghicago City Council.  The Tribune's 
coverage, including Rob Warden's commentary, is 
below.  Please feel free to further distribute 
the Report and post it on your website or in your 
archives. Thanks in advance for your support.

Flint Taylor
People's Law Office
773-235-0070

Rob Warden
Center on Wrongful Convictions
312-503-3291

For the Drafting Team

<http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-0704250002apr25,1,427633.story?coll=chi-newslocalchicago-hed>http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-0704250002apr25,1,427633.story?coll=chi-newslocalchicago-hed 

New report blasts probe into cop torture

By Michael Higgins, Tribune staff reporter. 
Tribune staff reporter Alexa Aguilar contributed to this report

April 25, 2007

A four-year, $6.5 million investigation into 
police torture in the 1970s and '80s was a 
whitewash that left crooked cops unindicted and 
soft-pedaled mistakes by top law-enforcement 
officials, including then Cook County State's 
Atty. Richard M. Daley, a coalition of civil 
rights groups argued in a report released Tuesday.

Two special prosecutors appointed to the matter 
in 2002 had ample evidence to charge former 
Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge and others with 
perjury and obstruction of justice, according to the coalition's report.

But instead, prosecutors Edward Egan and Robert 
Boyle conducted a "hopelessly flawed" 
investigation that was "calculated to obfuscate 
the truth about the torture scandal," the coalition's report said.

"Any prosecutor worth his salt would have 
prosecuted Jon Burge," Locke Bowman, attorney at 
Northwestern University's MacArthur Justice Center, said at a news conference.

Egan and Boyle also protected Daley and other 
supervisors from public embarrassment by ignoring 
the "conspiracy of silence" that allowed Burge's 
wrongdoing to continue, the report said.

Coalition officials said they would forward the 
report to federal prosecutors, Illinois Atty. 
Gen. Lisa Madigan, an international human-rights 
body and others in the hope of spurring further action.

More than 200 groups and individuals signed on to 
the coalition's report. The authors of the report 
include lawyers who have filed multimillion 
dollar lawsuits against the city on behalf of 
alleged torture victims and who believe that city 
officials have reneged on a settlement.

Law Department spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyle said 
Tuesday that city officials had just begun to 
review the coalition's report. She said that 
though the coalition urges the city to stop 
paying for Burge's defense in civil lawsuits, the 
city is legally obligated to pay.

Egan and Boyle could not be reached Tuesday for 
comment. James Sotos, an attorney who represents 
Burge in two civil cases, declined to comment. 
Last year, Egan and Boyle defended their 
investigation to the Cook County Board and 
objected to the notion that they went too easy on 
Daley for his handling of a 1982 letter that documented police torture.

In July, Daley said the letter was sent to his 
office's special prosecutions unit, which he said 
followed up, although he said some witnesses did 
not cooperate with investigators.

A Cook County judge appointed Boyle and Egan in 
2002 to investigate claims that Burge and 
detectives working under him routinely used 
torture, including electric shock, Russian 
roulette, beatings and attempted suffocation.

In a long-awaited report released in July, the 
special prosecutors said there was proof beyond a 
reasonable doubt that Burge and four other former 
officers abused suspects to extract confessions.

But Egan and Boyle also concluded that none of 
the men could be charged with a crime because the 
state's three-year time limit on felony charges has passed.

"We have considered every possible legal theory 
that would permit us to avoid the effect of the 
statute of limitations," Egan and Boyle 
concluded. "Regrettably, we have concluded that 
the statute of limitations would bar any prosecution."

But in its report Tuesday, the coalition argued 
that Burge and others should have been charged 
criminally for lying to cover up their original 
wrongdoing. The coalition's report alleged that 
Burge, for example, had denied under oath in 2003 
that he had witnessed or participated in any police torture.

At the coalition's news conference, Madison 
Hobley, who spent 16 years on Death Row before he 
was pardoned by Gov. George Ryan in 2003, called 
the special prosecutors' report a "sham" and said 
information he provided about the torture he 
endured was not included in the special prosecutors' report.

Hobley said he was handcuffed to a wall, beaten, 
smothered with a plastic typewriter cover and 
repeatedly called a racial slur by police 
detectives in 1987, when he was arrested after a 
fire killed his wife, son and five other people.

Other groups that signed on to the coalition's 
report include The Center on Wrongful 
Convictions, the Midwest office of Amnesty 
International, The Innocence Project, Cook County 
Bar Association, National Association of Black 
Law Enforcement Officers and numerous groups that oppose the death penalty.

Individuals who signed on include U.S. Rep. Danny 
Davis, Cook County Circuit Clerk Dorothy Brown, 
Rev. Jesse Jackson and authors Studs Terkel and Howard Zinn.

After the coalition's report was released, about 
30 protesters from Campaign to End the Death 
Penalty and other groups staged a rally outside City Hall.

<http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-070426warden-story,1,4516460.story?coll=chi-opinionfront-hed>http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-070426warden-story,1,4516460.story?coll=chi-opinionfront-hed 

The spot on the Daley legacy

April 26, 2007

How will history judge Mayor Richard Daley's 
legacy considering his handling of torture 
allegations? Send your comments to 
perspective at tribune.com, along with your name, 
hometown and a phone number where we can reach 
you, and we'll print some of your responses on Sunday.

By Rob Warden

Richard M. Daley has eclipsed his late father in 
many ways, and assuming he serves out his current 
term, also will surpass him as Chicago's longest serving mayor.

His legacy, like his father's, will be impressive.

Yet like his father's legacy, his will not be spotless.

It will be marred by what he himself has 
acknowledged as "a shameful episode in our 
history": two decades of systematic torture of 
African-American criminal suspects by white Chicago police officers.

What went on—plastic bags over heads; shackling 
to hot radiators; gun barrels in mouths; 
electrical shocks to ears, nostrils and genitals; 
cigarette burns to arms, legs and chests—is now 
well known and has been cited repeatedly in court 
opinions and, last year, in a special prosecutor's report.

Not so well known, however, is Daley's own role 
in the scandal, first as Cook County state's attorney, then as mayor.

In 1982, Chicago Police Supt. Richard Brzeczek 
notified State's Atty. Daley in writing of 
credible evidence that Area 2 Police Commander 
Jon Burge and a group of subordinates had 
tortured a prisoner named Andrew Wilson.

Daley had the power—and the duty—to act.

He did nothing.

In 1983, Daley's prosecutors won the conviction 
of Wilson, who was sentenced to death. Meanwhile, 
the torture of African-American murder suspects 
continued. The result: Innocent men were 
convicted of murder while the guilty remained on the street.

It took years for the facts to penetrate the 
walls of official silence. The first major 
development came in 1987, when the Illinois 
Supreme Court reversed Wilson's conviction, 
citing "extensive medical testimony and 
photographic evidence corroborating the 
defendant's injuries"--the very evidence Brzeczek 
had sent to Daley four years earlier.

In 1989, in a civil rights case brought by 
Wilson, dozens of other torture cases came to 
light, leading to an investigation by the Chicago 
Police Office of Professional Standards.

Then in 1993—four years after Daley became mayor 
and 11 years after Brzeczek informed him of the 
torture—Burge was fired (with full pension 
benefits) after the police investigation 
documented that he and more than a score of 
subordinates had been torturing suspects since the early 1970s.

Despite the police findings, however, there was 
no criminal investigation until 2002, when the 
presiding judge of the Cook County criminal 
court, Paul Biebel, appointed two special 
prosecutors, Edward Egan and Robert Boyle, to 
examine the evidence against Burge and his men.

The special prosecutors' investigation took four 
years and cost Cook County taxpayers more than $7 
million before ending last July with a 292-page 
report that concluded "beyond a reasonable doubt" 
that Wilson had been tortured, but lamenting that 
"the statute of limitations bars any prosecution of any officers."

In a bizarre perversion of logic, the special 
prosecutors' report shifted the blame for Daley's 
dereliction of duty to, of all people, Brzeczek. 
And, at a press conference after the report's 
release, Daley condemned the torture, as if he 
were merely an uninvolved third party.

On Tuesday, the fifth anniversary of the special 
prosecutors' appointment, a group of civil rights 
organizations, lawyers involved in torture and 
other police brutality cases, legal academics, 
civil rights leaders, and human rights advocates 
(myself among them) released a report critical of 
the weak official response to the scandal. The 
report pointedly laid out the facts regarding Daley's role.

After all these years, however, the only 
consequence for Daley will be the judgment of 
history—shame in the eyes of posterity. When his 
life is chronicled for the generations that 
follow, his role in the torture scandal can 
neither be ignored nor judged kindly.

The pity of it is that he could have avoided the 
disgrace simply by doing the sensible thing—the 
right thing—when Brzeczek notified him of Andrew 
Wilson's apparent torture in 1982. Wilson had 
been charged, along with his brother Jackie, with 
the murders of Chicago Police Officers William Fahey and Richard O'Brien.

There was little doubt that Wilson was guilty—or that he had been tortured.

At Cook County Jail, he had been examined by Dr. 
John Raba, the jail medical director, and found 
to be suffering from "multiple bruises, swellings 
and abrasions on his face and head," according to 
jail medical reports. After having Wilson's 
injuries photographed, Raba sent them to Brzeczek 
requesting "a thorough investigation of this alleged brutality."

The situation presented a conflict for Daley. 
Because his office was prosecuting Andrew Wilson, 
he could hardly investigate the police involved. 
All Daley had to do was refer the matter to the 
attorney general or the U.S. attorney, and so advise Brzeczek.

Instead, according to the special prosecutors' 
report, he did nothing more than confer with his 
two top aides—Richard Devine, the present 
state''s attorney, and William Kunkle, now a Cook 
County Circuit Court judgeâ€”and enter into a conspiracy of silence.

Brzeczek's letter went unanswered, and Daley's 
office proceeded to win Wilson's tainted 
conviction in 1983. Wilson was sentenced to 
death. After the Supreme Court reversed his 
conviction four years later, he again was 
convicted—without his tortured confession—and this time sentenced to life.

Meanwhile, at least 50 other credible torture 
allegations had come to light. Some of the 
victims, unlike Wilson, no doubt were innocent. 
Among the more egregious examples were Madison 
Hobley, Leroy Orange, Stanley Howard, and Aaron 
Patterson, who were sentenced to death under 
Daley based on false confessions extracted through torture.

Those four men, who languished behind bars a 
total of more than 70 years before securing 
pardons based on innocence in 2003, were among 
nine innocent men sentenced to death and two 
dozen others sentenced to prison for crimes they 
did not commit during Daley's nine-year tenure as state's attorney.

Although for the time being the public remains 
largely oblivious to Daley's role in the torture 
scandal, the reality may begin to sink in as 
monetary damages from that period continue to soar.

To date, city and county taxpayers have coughed 
up $45 million to settle civil rights claims 
dating from Daley's time as state's attorney, 
plus an estimated $20 million in legal fees in 
those cases. And, on top of the $7 million the 
county paid for the special prosecutors' 
investigation, the city reportedly is on the 
verge of settling torture claims brought by 
Hobley, Howard, Orange and Patterson for $15 
million, according to lawyers involved in the case.

History is unlikely to pass lightly over facts so 
plainly etched into the public record. Torture, 
it seems, is an indelible stain on the Daley 
legacy—a damned spot that neither he nor his apologists can out.
----------
Rob Warden is the executive director of the 
Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law.
Copyright Â© 2007, <http://www.chicagotribune.com/>Chicago Tribune

Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
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