 Michael Tillman was tortured by Chicago Police until he confessed to a crime he did not commit. |
After spending almost 24 years in prison, Michael Tillman was exonerated of his false conviction and released Jan. 14.
Tillman was tortured by Chicago police officers into confessing to the 1986 rape and murder of 42-year-old Betty Howard. There have been dozens of reports of police in Area 2 brutalizing young African American men to extract confessions, a criminal practice that has become familiar to the Black community in Chicago’s south side.
With nothing else connecting him to the terrible act, Tillman is now free—but only after losing a quarter century of his life in a prison cell.
At the time of the crime Tillman lived and worked as a janitor in the building where Betty Howard lived. Chicago police “questioned” Tillman for three days. Detectives beat and punched him in the stomach and face until he vomited blood, suffocated him by pulling plastic bags over his head, poured a soft drink down his nose and throat in a form of water-boarding, deprived him of food and water, and threatened him with death with a gun pressed against his head.
Because of the torture, Tillman confessed to the rape and murder and implicated two other men who would prove to have nothing to do with the crime. Based on the forced confession alone, Tillman was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He was 20-years-old.
In 1991, police arrested and convicted another person who had possession of the murder weapon and some of the victim’s personal property and whose fingerprints had been found at the crime scene. Still, a judge re-convicted Tillman in a 1996 retrial, arguing the confession still held up.
Now that evidence of systematic police torture of Black youth in Chicago’s south side has come to light, there was nothing else that the courts could do to keep Tillman locked up. Prosecutors conceded that, should Tillman be retried, the state would be unable to prove that his confession was not coerced. According to Tillman’s attorney Flint Taylor, there are at least 20 other innocent Black men currently locked up due to forced confessions extracted through torture, who may be able to benefit from Tillman’s exoneration.
This Gestapo-style police terror targeting the Black community was standard practice under Police Commander Jon Burge. Torture and cover-up became “tools of the trade.” Burge was fired from his position in 1993 and will soon face trial for lying while testifying at a civil proceeding about torture in the Chicago Police Department. However, no charges have been brought against a single detective for the practice of torture.
Racist police brutality, ranging from torture to wanton killings, is a natural feature of capitalism. Institutional racism and bigotry targeting African Americans, immigrants, women and members of the LGBT community effectively divide workers and facilitate the super-exploitation of those who are the most vulnerable and oppressed. Racist criminalization has greatly contributed to confining large sectors of the Black population to the lowest-paid jobs as they struggle with discrimination and disproportionately high unemployment and incarceration rates.
Tillman’s release is just one step forward. All those who were falsely convicted as a result of torture and other criminal practices must be immediately released. Police who were involved in these practices must face charges for their crimes. Justice for the victims of police terror now!
