- December
15
Chicago
Death Row Case Reopened
By MIKE
ROBINSON,
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 Monday, his claims will get a new hearing under orders from the
Illinois Supreme Court. With the hearing comes pressing questions into
allegations of systematic torture at a Chicago police unit in 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 Lt. 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,'' U.S. 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 comes at a time when the fairness of Illinois'
entire criminal justice system is under increasing scrutiny.
Thirteen
death row inmates have been freed due to wrongful convictions since
capital punishment was restored in 1977, prompting Gov. 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.
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