“It is our judgment that the evidence in those cases would be sufficient to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Regrettably, we have concluded that the statute of limitations would bar any prosecution of any offenses our investigation has disclosed.”
Special prosecutors Edward Egan and Robert Boyle arrived at the above conclusion, when they released a nearly
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The report exposes the decades-long institutionalized abuse that occurred in the Chicago Police Department, and the systematic complicity of the judicial system. Studied in the report were some 148 allegations of torture committed by former Chicago police commander Jon Burge and the officers who reported to him. It’s a shocking exposé of racist police violence against oppressed people.
Burge and about a dozen officers at the Area 2 violent crimes division tortured African American men into confessions between the early 1970s and the early 1990s.
Burge was fired from the Chicago Police Department in 1993 after an internal investigation found that he had tortured a suspect named Andrew Wilson. Burge now lives in Florida on a taxpayer-funded pension. After the internal investigation that resulted in Burge’s firing, two other officers found to be involved in the torture received fifteen-month suspensions and demotions. The demotions were later overturned after lobbying by the ultra-reactionary Fraternal Order of Police. Approximately 10 other officers who were allegedly involved in the torture of prisoners received no punishment.
The report released by Egan and Boyle detailed Burge’s torture techniques to elicit confessions, including near suffocation, electric shock and mock Russian roulette, as well as more mundane techniques, such as beating the victims with fists, feet and telephone books.
“In three cases we could prove torture beyond a reasonable doubt,” the report stated. It also included the following passage: “the evidence would support an indictment and conviction of Jon Burge in the case of Andrew Wilson. … For reasons we explain in another part of this report, we conclude that the statute of limitations bars any prosecution of any officers.”
Report fails to blame political leaders
Andrew Wilson, whose abuse allegations led to Burge’s firing, was convicted of killing two police officers in 1982. Wilson claimed Burge and two detectives beat and tortured him with electric shocks. Wilson is still in prison serving a life sentence for the conviction that resulted from his confession under torture. Former Illinois governor George Ryan commuted his death row sentence to life in 2003. At that time, Ryan granted clemency to four death row inmates, including Aaron Patterson, and declared a moratorium on executions. He cited evidence of torture and other issues, including prosecutorial misconduct, the use of jailhouse snitches, and inequities of race and class in sentences imposed for violent crimes.
The special prosecutors’ report also demonstrates that there was a high-level governmental cover-up of Andrew Wilson’s torture. In 1982, an internal investigation revealed that Wilson was tortured, but no one was ever indicted. However, Egan and Boyle do not condemn the people who were truly responsible for the cover-up that occurred in the Andrew Wilson case. The report reveals that Richard Brzeczek, the police superintendent at the time of the investigation, knew that Wilson was tortured. Brzeczek wrote a letter to Mayor Richard J. Daley, who was then the state’s attorney of Cook County. Brzeczek asked him to criminally investigate the torture of Andrew Wilson. Daley and his first assistant, Richard Devine, the current Cook County state’s attorney, did nothing.
The special prosecutors’ report exonerates Daley and Devine—the ruling powers here in the city of Chicago—and instead blames Richard Brzeczek, not only for the cover-up of Wilson’s torture but also for those who were tortured after the 1982 investigation.
The case of Aaron Patterson
Aaron Patterson was one of those tortured after 1982. Patterson is well known in Chicago for his campaign against his own frame-up in 1986. Patterson had been convicted and sentenced to death for a double murder of an elderly couple on Chicago’s south side. His conviction was based on an unsigned confession extracted after hours of torture. He spent 17 years in prison before winning his release in January 2003.
Aaron has fought tirelessly, both before and after his release by former governor George Ryan, to hold accountable the
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The day after he was released from death row, Patterson met with Ryan to press for clemency for the other torture victims who were still in prison. One of those prisoners is Andrew Wilson.
Then, almost two years later on August 5, 2004, Chicago police and federal ATF agents arrested Aaron Patterson on phony charges of selling drugs and receiving guns from an informer. The informer had charges against him dropped and was paid $6,000 for setting up Patterson. The bogus charges against Patterson follow a pattern of arrests against people who fight back against the long history of police abuse and torture in Chicago. However, this was the first time that the federal government got involved in the 30-year-old scandal.
Aaron Patterson’s arrest occurred just days after a federal judge ordered former police commander Jon Burge to come back to Chicago. Burge was to be deposed in civil suits filed by Patterson and three other torture victims who were also wrongfully convicted, sentenced to death, and eventually released from death row. The four suits are against the city of Chicago and current and former police officers, including Burge.
Lawrence Kennon, a petitioning attorney for the torture victims, told the Chicago Defender on July 20, 2006, that it was disappointing that no indictments will follow the release of the special prosecutors’ report. Kennon said he hopes for federal indictments. Report co-author Boyle said a copy of the report was delivered to the U.S. attorney’s office.
For two years, Aaron Patterson has been in prison awaiting trial. The U.S attorney whose office will try Patterson is none other than Patrick Fitzpatrick, who decided not to prosecute Karl Rove. This is the same U.S. attorney’s office that has decided not to proceed against the police torturers on two separate occasions.
Left unanswered by the special prosecutors’ report is the important issue of new trials for Burge’s torture victims who are still in prison. Andrew Wilson has been in prison for 24 years.
This report once again shows that the judicial system is incapable of reforming itself. The capitalist state covers up its mistakes and tries to punish people who seek to reveal them in the interests of true justice.
It will take a people’s movement to free Andrew Wilson and Aaron Patterson and to jail Burge, Daley, Devine and all the others who are complicit in the racist judicial system.
