INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP REVIEWS CASES OF CHICAGO TORTURE UNDER BURGE
Illinois Supreme Court Victory for Alleged Burge Torture Victim Stanley Wrice
Updated (02/07/12)
On February 2, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that Stanley Wrice, one of 15 men still in prison despite credible evidence that they were tortured into confessing by subordinates of convicted former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, is entitled to a new evidentiary hearing to resolve his torture claim.
The Roderick MacArthur Justice Center filed an amicus brief in the case on behalf of legal and political leaders including former U.S. Senator Adlai Stevenson and former Illinois Governor Jim Thompson urging immediate hearings for Wrice and the 14 other alleged torture victims still in prison.
Last year, a state appeals court ruled that Wrice was entitled to the hearing, which could lead to the reversal of his conviction. Prosecutors sought to block that hearing in an appeal to the State Supreme Court, claiming that the torture inflicted by Burge's notorious "Midnight Crew" was "harmless error."
In the Supreme Court's opinion in Wrice's case, Justice Mary Jane Theis wrote for a unanimous court, "Use of a defendant's physically coerced confession as substantive evidence of his guilt is never harmless error."
The Court's opinion in Wrice's case should apply to the 14 other Burge victims who remain behind bars, despite claims similar to Wrice's.
Read the Washington Post's article about the opinion.
Hear more about the significance of the decision from former Illinois Gov. Thompson and MacArthur Justice Center Attorney Bowman in this Channel 7 story.
Read more about the amicus brief filed by the MacArthur Justice Center
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MacArthur Justice Center Files Amicus Brief in Burge Torture Case Before the Illinois Supreme Court
Updated (10/20/2011)
The Roderick MacArthur Justice Center authored an amicus brief to the Illinois Supreme Court signed by legal and political heavyweights including former U.S. Senator Adlai Stevenson and former Illinois Governor Jim Thompson urging immediate hearings for Stanley Wrice and other still-imprisoned victims of torture by former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and his men. The brief was filed in the case of Stanley Wrice, who was convicted of a brutal rape based in part on a confession he claims Burge detectives extracted by torture.
The brief points out that it has been 10 years since the Illinois high court last heard a case involving a Burge torture victim. Summarizing the overwhelming evidence that has emerged in that decade that Burge and his men systematically tortured African American suspects in their custody, the brief declares: "The Burge cases confront this Court with officially acknowledged systemic torture—an occurrence that is not only unique to this State, but a blatant violation of human rights. This extraordinary circumstance calls for this Court to employ the Illinois Constitution in the most forceful possible way, to the end that this kind of disgraceful police conduct will not be repeated in our State."
The MacArthur Justice Center brief urges the Illinois Supreme Court to order hearings for Wrice and 14 other men who allege their convictions hinge on confessions extracted by Burge-connected torture and who still remain behind bars.
The arguments in the brief were echoed this summer on the editorial pages of both major Chicago newspapers.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on Wrice's case in the coming months.
Read the amicus brief filed by the Roderick MacArthur Justice Center.
Chicago Tribune editorial: "How to scrub the stain of the Burge era"
Chicago Sun-Times editorial: "Since when is torture just harmless error?"
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Burge Sentenced to Four and One-half Years For Lying About Torture
Updated (02/07/2011)
The decades-long struggle to bring Jon Burge to justice ended in mid-January when a federal district judge sentenced the disgraced former Chicago Police Commander to four and one-half years in prison for lying under oath about multiple acts of torture he inflicted on men wrongfully convicted of crimes they didn't commit.
Roderick MacArthur Justice Center Legal Director Locke Bowman represented several Burge victims, including Darrel Cannon, Ronald Kitchen, Victor Safforld and Michael Tillman – all of whom were released from prison after their convictions were voided in court.
"When a confession is coerced ... the administration of justice is undermined irreparably," said U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow in issuing Burge's sentence. "How can one trust that justice will be served when the justice system has been so defiled?"
In a rebuke of police and prosecutors who failed to halt Burge's torture spree despite evidence of the abuse that surfaced as early 1982, Lefkow said: "How I wish there had not been such a dismal failure of leadership in the (police) department that it came to this. If others, such as the United States attorney and the (Cook County) state's attorney, had given heed long ago, so much pain could have been avoided."
During a tenure that spanned from the early 1970s until he was dismissed from the Chicago Police Department in the early 1990s, Burge and the "Midnight Crew" he supervised beat, burned, shocked and suffocated dozens of African-American suspects until they submitted false confessions to crimes they didn't commit.
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Alleged Burge Torture Victim Granted New Hearing
Updated (12/13/2010)
More than 20 men who were allegedly tortured by Jon Burge and his men remain in prison. One of these men—Stanley Wrice—won a victory last week when the Court granted him an evidentiary hearing where, for the first time, he will be permitted to show that his alleged torture at the hands of John Byrne and Peter Dignan, two of Burge's men, was part of the larger pattern of abuse of African American suspects by detectives working for Burge.
The MacArthur Justice Center had filed an amicus brief with the Appellate Court in Wrice's case arguing that, for the good of the Illinois criminal justice system, Wrice had to be afforded a full and fair hearing on his torture claim.
View a copy of the Court's decision to grant a hearing (pdf)
View a copy of the Amicus Brief (pdf)
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Burge Torture Victim Released from Prison
Updated (09/27/2010)
After 21 years in prison, including over a decade on Death Row, Victor Safforld, one of scores of African American men who have credibly claimed for years that they were tortured by convicted former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and his associates into fabricating confessions to crimes, is now a free man.
Safforld walked out of Cook County Jail and into the arms of joyous family members in late September after Cook County Circuit Court Judge Clayton Crane overturned the second of his two wrongful murder convictions earlier this year. Crane had ruled that both convictions resulted from false confessions that Burge’s underlings illegally extracted by torturing Safforld and ordered new trials for Safforld in both cases.
Following that ruling, in May 2010, Safforld agreed to plead guilty in one of the two murder cases in exchange for an agreed sentence that would result in his release from prison this September.
As Safforld begins a new life, Burge awaits sentencing for his conviction on charges related to nearly three decades of systematic torture at Area 2 and 3 police headquarters in Chicago. A jury convicted Burge of federal perjury and obstruction of justice charges in June.
There are an additional 24 men still behind bars who, like Safforld, credibly claim that they too were convicted based on confessions extracted from them through torture. Locke Bowman, Legal Director of The Roderick MacArthur Justice Center, said his organization believes that each of these men deserves a full and fair hearing into his claim of torture and plans to engage in advocacy to achieve those hearings.
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Ronald Kitchen Sues Burge, Daley, Others for Torture and Wrongful Conviction
Updated (08/10/2010)
Days after disgraced former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge was found guilty of crimes related to his systematic torture of African American suspects, Ronald Kitchen, a former Death Row inmate who was declared innocent and released from prison last year, sued Burge and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley for their key roles in his wrongful imprisonment.
Burge was a central culprit, according to the lawsuit. The suit alleges that Kitchen was subjected to an abusive interrogation in August 1988 that included protracted beatings and an assault on his testicles with a blackjack, among other things. According to the suit, Burge was a direct participant in the abuse.
Under the coercion of this physical abuse, Kitchen gave a false confession to a quintuple murder that he did not commit. Kitchen was convicted, principally on the basis of this coerced confession, and condemned to Death Row, where he spent 13 years until the sentence was commuted by former Illinois Governor George Ryan, who was so troubled by recurring torture accusations that he adopted a moratorium on the Death Penalty. Kitchen remained in prison for a total of 21 years. He was released in July 2009, after the Illinois Attorney General concluded that Kitchen's post-conviction challenge to his conviction should not be contested.
"Burge's conviction affords a small measure of justice to those he victimized – but the quest for justice doesn't end there," said Locke Bowman, Legal Director of the Roderick MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law. "Burge, his underlings and high-ranking officials in local law enforcement—including Mayor Daley—all conspired to take 21 years of freedom from Ronald Kitchen. The justice system owes a debt to Ronald Kitchen for failing him so tragically."
Kitchen's suit alleges that, as Cook County State's Attorney, Daley was presented with credible evidence linking Burge to torture in 1982, more than five years before Kitchen was arrested. Daley became complicit in the crime when he neglected to conduct an investigation into the allegations, squandering an opportunity to stop the torture from proliferating and ultimately claiming Kitchen as a victim. Daley personally authorized his office to seek the Death Penalty against Kitchen and against a number of other Burge victims, despite their claims that the charges against them rested on confessions extracted by torture.
The Circuit Court of Cook County granted Kitchen a Certificate of Innocence in 2009.
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Finally: Burge Found Guilty in Connection with Torture Spree
Updated (08/02/2010)
Culminating a two-decade long quest for justice, disgraced former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge was convicted in late June of perjury in connection with the torture he and and Chicago Police detectives working under his command systematically inflicted on African-American suspects during a 20-year period.
The conviction was welcomed by Darrell Cannon, Ronald Kitchen, Victor Safforld and Michael Tillman, torture victims represented by the Roderick MacArthur Justice Center. But the conviction starkly posed questions about the continuing failure of the Illinois criminal justice system to address the consequences of Burge's misconduct. Some twenty men who credibly claim that they were tortured or abused by Burge or his officers remain incarcerated in the Illinois prisons without ever had a full and fair hearing into their torture claims. The Roderick MacArthur Justice Center's Legal Director, Locke Bowman, calls this a "disgrace" and a "moral failure" of the Illinois criminal justice system. The jury verdict came nearly 30 years after credible evidence of the torture was first reported to Chicago Police and Cook County prosecutors, who collectively chose to ignore the charges, enabling the abuse to continue. Multiple investigations later reached the same conclusion: that Burge had committed repeated acts of torture.
The resulting epidemic of tainted convictions—including cases in which the torture victims were sentenced to death—was one of the factors that prompted former Illinois Governor George Ryan to institute a moratorium on the death penalty. Meanwhile, the city continues to incur massive legal fees to defend Burge and has already paid tens of millions in legal fees and settlements in lawsuits filed by his victims.
Burge was fired in 1993, but was never criminally charged by state prosecutors, including former Cook County State's Attorney and current Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who turned a blind eye to the ample evidence of his crimes. As a result, the statute of limitations on the acts of torture Burge committed expired. But federal prosecutors charged Burge with lying under oath in answers to questions he gave into one of the civil suits filed against him.
Burge was indicted in 2008 by a federal grand jury. He awaits sentencing.
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Stage Set for Burge Torture Victim to be Freed from Wrongful Imprisonment
Updated (05/24/2010)
Weeks before indicted former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge faces trial in connection with his systematic torture of African-American suspects, one of his victims, Victor Safforld, reached an agreement with prosecutors that will soon end his 20-year trauma behind bars for crimes he didn't commit.
Prosecutors offered to drop charges against Safforld for the murder of Delvin Boelter in exchange for his guilty plea in another murder. Safforld, formerly known as Cortez Brown, was wrongfully convicted of both killings after Burge and his underlings tortured him into confessing to the murders.
Cook County Circuit Court Judge Clayton J. Crane nullified both convictions and condemned the unlawful acts of the police, setting the stage for new trials in both cases. Last week, Safforld acquiesced with the plea deal in order to obtain his freedom after two decades of wrongful imprisonment.
"Having endured 20 years of gross injustice behind bars, Victor's freedom was priority number one," said Locke Bowman, Legal Director of the Roderick MacArthur Justice Center, which with attorneys Flint Taylor, Joey Mogul and Sarah Gelsomino of the People's Law Office represent Safforld. "Awaiting and enduring two murder trials would have prolonged the agony of a man wrongfully imprisoned, so Victor did the right thing for himself and those who love him, by regaining the freedom he should have never been forced to relinquish."
During the 20 years that Safforld languished in prison, the sordid details of Burge's 30-year ring of torture came to light, thanks to persistent media scrutiny. The scandal led to episodic – and sometimes faulty – investigations by police and special prosecutors before the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago charged Burge last year with perjury for a false statement he made about his actions to investigators. The perjury trial will begin on May 24, 2010.
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Attorneys and Human Rights Activists to Court: Allow Burge Victims to Air Claims of Torture
Updated (03/08/2010)
As over 20 men continue to languish in prison for wrongful convictions resulting from the Jon Burge torture scandal, attorneys and human rights activists recently asked the Illinois Appellate Court to clear the way for full and fair hearings into their claims of abuse.
In a "friend of the court" brief filed in support of Stanley Wrice—who alleges he was beaten into confessing by John Byrne (Burge's "right hand man") and Peter Dignan (a member of Burge's "Midnight Crew")—advocates argue Wrice and the other still-incarcerated men deserve prompt and complete hearings into their claims that their convictions rest on confessions procured by torture.
To view a copy of the Amicus Brief, click here.
To view of a copy of the press release, click here.
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MacArthur Justice Center, Human Rights Groups, Bar Associations and Others Seek International Probe into Cases of Police Torture Under Jon Burge
(October 14, 2005)
In a move that could impact Chicago authorities suspected of stalling their own investigation, international human rights monitors conducted a hearing on October 14 into well-documented allegations that Chicago Police systematically tortured 135 African-American criminal suspects during the 1970s and 80s, with total impunity.
The hearing by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) was granted at the request of a coalition of human rights organizations, bar associations, attorneys, and community activists that have long sought justice against former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and other officials responsible for the torture of African-Americans in an effort to coerce false confessions.
Download press release (pdf)
View letter sent to the international human rights group seeking an investigation (pdf)
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