Jon Burge with his lawyers outside the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago.
By Deborah Douglas, Special to BlackAmericaWeb.com
June 30, 2010
CHICAGO — It was a great day for white folks and a harbinger of the promise of a post-racial America Monday in federal court when a nearly all-white jury found former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice.
“I’m elated that a jury of predominately white people have spoken and said it’s wrong to torture African-American men,” regardless of their criminal histories, said G. Flint Taylor, a Chicago attorney who represents several Burge torture victims.
“It restores my faith in white people,” said Janine Hoft, a partner in Taylor’s People’s Law Office.
An all-white jury, with the exception of one black woman, deliberated nearly three days, posing questions to Judge Joan Lefkow along the way to come to this conclusion: They believed former suspects — black men with rap sheets for crimes such as burglary and robbery — over the authoritative, confident testimony of the white-haired, decorated Vietnam veteran Burge.
Federal prosecutors said Burge lied about torturing suspects in his custody when he worked as a commander of a South Side police station called Area 2 and tried to block efforts to get at the truth. Burge’s defense team maintained the victims were career criminals who synched up the torture narrative as a strategy for beating convictions:
“That’s the scam,” said Rick Bueke during closing arguments last week. “That’s what this is all about. Is this what society has become?”
Burge will be sentenced Nov. 5. He faces 45 years in prison and fines.
Burge was arrested in October 2008 at his home in Apollo, Fla., and charged with perjury and obstruction in the case of Madison Hobley, who had sued him for wrongful conviction. Hobley was falsely charged with setting a fire that killed his wife, baby and several neighbors and was sentenced to death. He sat on Death Row more than a decade, insisting he had been tortured into confessing before former Illinois Gov. George Ryan pardoned him in 2003.
Hobley’s civil case was settled, but prosecutors at every government level were stuck on how to address public outrage that Burge was getting off scot-free for breaking the laws he was sworn to uphold. The federal perjury and obstruction case was a last-ditch effort of sorts to achieve some level of accountability.
In fact, Burge-era torture been confirmed by several government investigations and reports. For example, an Office of Professional Standards investigation released in 1992 found 50 cases of alleged police torture. “Alleged” because despite the official nature of the investigation, it would take a criminal trial to establish, verify and validate that torture did occur.
In 2002, Cook County Judge Paul Biebel authorized special prosecutors to look into the claims. After four years and $7 million, they found evidence of torture but deemed it legally too late to prosecute.
During the five-week trial, Burge’s repertoire of torture techniques were detailed by victims, including:
- Electro-shocking Anthony Holmes’ genitals on May 29, 1973, when Holmes was being questioned for murder
- Placing alligator clips on the ears and nose of the late Andrew Wilson, leaving scorch marks while questioning him in the murder investigation of two Chicago police Feb. 14, 1982.
- Supervising the night Gregory Banks was suffocated repeatedly into confession in 1983. “ ‘We have something special for niggers,’ ” Banks said an officer told him. After serving seven years, that case was later overturned and Banks was compensated.
- Pointing a gun at the head of Shadeed Mu’mim and playing Russian roulette in 1985.
- Victims testified to being bagged, burned and beaten. Their stories were backed up by a cadre of defense attorneys, medical professionals, friends and family members.
The Burge conviction is only the beginning, said advocates for the wrongfully convicted, who now want the officers who reported to Burge and allegedly tortured victims — the A-Team — also tried.
In fact, said Chicago Ald. Ed Smith, let all of the men with valid claims of torture out of prison: “… I want those people out, and I want them made whole.”
Freeing those men and compensating torture victims who are free and trying to re-establish their lives will be easier, said Rob Warden, executive director of the Northwestern University Center on Wrongful Convictions.
“It took so many years, but finally there’s official recognition of this horrible chapter in the city’s history,” Warden said. “Justice was delayed but not denied.”
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Deborah Douglas, who has written extensively about the wrongfully convicted and the innocent, is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University.