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Media Statement by Rev. Dr. Calvin Morris, Executive Director,
Community Renewal Society
July 19, 1999
From 1972 until 1986, Chicago was the site to one of the most severe and horrifying patterns of law enforcement abuse ever recorded in U.S. history: the systematic torture of dozens of African-American detainees by Chicago police dfficers under the supervision of former commander Jon Burge. Under Burge, torture became a routine policy implemented to extract alleged confessions. Methods of torture included electric shocks, suffocation, Russian roulette, and burns, among other forms of pain. Burge and the offending officers under his command were all white. The torture victims-with one or two exceptions~were all African-Americans. This pattern of torture was verified and documented by the Chicago Police Department's (CPD). Office of Professional Standards (OPS) in its 1990 "Goldston report", which described the pattern as systematic" and "methodical", involving multiple officers. Amnesty International further documented the pattern of torture in a December 1990 report. Moreover, the case of Andrew Wilson, a torture victim represented by the People's Law Office, decisively exposed Burge as a torturer. Ultimately, these developments, fueled by citizen activism, resulted in Burge's termination for torture from the force in 1992 by the Chicago Police Board. Since then, additional OPS investigations have uncovered more evidence of torture by Burge and his officers, and numerous state and federal court decisions have recognized the unmistakable import of the evidence of systematic torture.
Despite the termination of police commander Jon Burge from the force in 1992 for torture the problem of police torture in Chicago has not been resolved. The problem of police torture will continue to be unresolved as long as three basic conditions of injustice persist: 1) as long as the police officers who carried out the torture with Burge remain on the force and rise up the chain of command with impunity; 2) as long as the prosecutors who were aware of the torture, but who nonetheless prosecuted innocent men on the basis of false confessions, remain in the State's Attorney's office and are promoted with impunity; and 3) as long as the torture victims-convicted on the basis of false confessions-- remain in prison and on death row due to the refusal of Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine to re-open these cases for new hearings or trials. The Chicago Police Department and the Cook County State's Attorney have all failed to effectively address these conditions.
We are here today, representing diverse sectors of society, to publicly call for a federal investigation by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice into the pattern of police torture and prosecutorial misconduct that has subjected ordinary citizens to gross violations of their civil and human rights, while simultaneously shielding police torturers and corrupt officials from discipline and prosecution, 1 am joined in making this request by the Honorable Danny K. Davis of the U.S. House of Representatives; Nancy Botline, the Director of the Midwest Office of Amnesty International; the Honorable William Delgado of the Illinois House of Representatives; Stan Willis the co-chair of the Chicago Conference of Black Lawyers; Pat Hill, the former president of the African-American Police League; and Mary Powers, Executive Director of Citizen's Alert.
Specifically, we are seeking a federal probe to target: 1) the refusal of the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County State's Attorney's office to investigate, discipline, and prosecute those officers who were directly involved, under the supervision of former police commander Jon Burge, in torturing African-American detainees; 2) the role of prosecutors in wrongfully convicting torture victims; and 3) the failure of the Cook County State's Attorney's office to re-open the cases of those Burge victims~particularly those on death row-who were convicted on the basis of alleged confessions.
The case of Aaron Patterson serves as a compelling example of why a federal investigation is needed. Patterson has spent the last ten years of his life on Illinois' death row for a crime we believe he did not commit. He was convicted in 1989 of a double-homicide on the basis of an alleged confession and the testimony of teen-age girl named Marva Hall. Physical evidence uncovered at the crime scene-namely fingerprints-did not match those of Patterson. Since Patterson's conviction, Marva Hall has recanted multiple times, stating most recently in a 1998 signed affidavit that she was coerced to falsely implicate Patterson in the crime by trial prosecutor Jack Hynes. Moreover, it is now known that commander Jon flurge was in charge of Patterson's interrogation at Area II in 1986, that Patterson was severely tortured, and that he never confessed. Additionally, there is growing body of evidence that points to the man who may have been the real killer.
This obvious miscarriage of justice has provoked a growing movement of ordinary citizens, community leaders, and elected officials to demand a re-opening of Patterson's case and a federal probe of the police and prosecutorial behavior of which the Patterson case is a glaring example.
For more information, Dr. Norris can be reached at 312-427-4830
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