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http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/350/nation/Claims_of_police_torture_to_get
_hearingP.shtml
Claims of police torture to get hearing
By Mike Robinson, Associated Press, 12/16/2001
CHICAGO - Aaron Patterson is a death row inmate who claims police punched
him and suffocated him with a plastic typewriter cover 15 years ago to
extract a false confession in the killings of an elderly couple.
A few years ago, Patterson's claims might have been dismissed.
But beginning tomorrow, his claims will get a new hearing under orders from
the Illinois Supreme Court. With the hearing come pressing questions into
allegations of systematic torture at a Chicago police unit in the 1980s,
mounting calls for an outside investigator, and growing doubts about the
convictions of as many as 10 Illinois death row inmates.
''It's our point of view that there's been a concerted effort to keep this
secret within the police department for many years,'' said Locke Bowman, an
attorney at the University of Chicago law school.
Bowman is one of two lawyers asking for the appointment of a special
prosecutor to investigate what happened at the Area 2 detective headquarters
during the 1980s and decide whether charges should are warranted.
At the heart of the scandal is a violent crimes unit in the far southern end
of Chicago in the 1980s commanded by former police Lieutenant Jon Burge.
Burge was fired in 1993 after a death row inmate, Andrew Wilson, won a $1.1
million civil suit against the department, claiming he was tortured with
electric shocks and handcuffed to a hot radiator at Burge's precinct.
A police board found that Wilson was indeed abused while in Burge's custody.
A subsequent investigation by the police department found that abuse
occurred and was systematic.
A federal judge in 1999 also painted a damning picture of Burge and his
precinct.
''It is now common knowledge that in the early to mid-1980s Jon Burge and
many officers working under him regularly engaged in the physical abuse and
torture of prisoners to extract confessions,'' US District Judge Milton
Shadur said in the case of another suspect who claimed he was tortured.
Burge, who now lives in Florida, continues to deny that he tortured anyone.
His former attorney, William Kunkle, called the department's report
''garbage.''
In calling for an outside investigator to look into allegations of police
torture, Bowman and others point to the fact that prosecutors have tried to
cut deals with inmates, like Patterson, to get them to drop their claims
against police.
Cook County State's Attorney Dick Devine agreed in January to an early
release for another defendant, Darrell Cannon, who has served 17 years of a
life term for murder, as part of a deal that includes him dropping claims
that Burge put a shotgun barrel to his mouth and used an electric cattle
prod to shock his genitals.
Bowman and others also say Devine and Cook County prosecutors have too many
conflicts of interest.
Devine was an assistant state's attorney when Richard M. Daley, now
Chicago's mayor, was the county's top prosecutor. At the same time, a number
of the criminal cases that involved Burge's unit went to trial.
The city also paid Devine's former law firm more than $850,000 to represent
Burge and three others in the Andrew Wilson civil lawsuit.
That's irrelevant, said Assistant State's Attorney Gerald E. Nora, who is
representing Devine in the case to decide whether a special prosecutor is
needed.
Nora said the statute of limitations on any crimes that officers may have
committed ran out. Even if a conspiracy had existed, he said, it would have
been over long ago. There is nothing to prosecute, he said.
The calls for an outside investigator arise as the fairness of Illinois's
entire criminal justice system is under increasing scrutiny.
Thirteen death row inmates have been freed owing to wrongful convictions
since capital punishment was restored in 1977, prompting Governor George
Ryan to declare a moratorium on executions and establish a panel to review
the death penalty process.
Earlier this month, three men who served 14 years of their life sentences in
prison for the rape and murder of a college student were set free after Cook
County prosecutors said there was no evidence they had anything to do with
the crime.
This story ran on page A21 of the Boston Globe on 12/16/2001.
� Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
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