Ex-Chicago cop faces 30-plus years in torture case
AP – FILE
- In this May 24, 2010 file photo, former Chicago police lieutenant Jon Burge
leaves the federal …
By KAREN HAWKINS, Associated
Press Karen Hawkins, Associated Press – Thu Jan 20,
3:56 am ET
CHICAGO – As a decorated Chicago
police lieutenant, Jon Burge prided himself
on sending bad guys to prison by getting them to confess to terrible crimes —
and by committing terrible crimes himself in the process, prosecutors say. Now,
having been convicted of lying about the violent means he and his men used to
get confessions, it is Burge's turn to face prison time.
With the sentencing hearing for
Burge scheduled to start Thursday, prosecutors say his perjury and obstruction
of justice convictions add up to 30-plus years in federal prison. Defense attorneys are
arguing for less than two years for the 63-year-old former commander whose name
has become synonymous with police brutality in the nation's third-largest city.
Both sides will call witnesses,
and U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow will decide whether to also allow testimony
from outside groups with an interest in a case that's been nearly 40 years in
the making. The hearing is expected to last two days.
Dozens of suspects — almost all
of them black men — claimed for decades that Burge and his officers tortured
them into confessing to crimes ranging from armed robbery to murder.
Prosecutors presented testimony at trial from five men — Anthony Holmes, Melvin
Jones, Andrew Wilson, Gregory Banks and Shadeed Mu'min — who claimed Burge or
his men put plastic bags over their heads until they passed out, stuck guns in
their mouths or shocked them with electric currents.
Burge was charged with lying
about the alleged torture in a lawsuit filed by former death row inmate Madison
Hobley, who was sentenced to death for a 1987 fire that killed seven people,
including his wife and son. Hobley was later pardoned.
Hobley claimed detectives put a
plastic typewriter cover over his head to make it impossible for him to
breathe. Burge denied knowing anything about the "bagging" or taking
part in it. The indictment against Burge never said Hobley was tortured,
instead accusing Burge of lying with respect to participating in or knowing of
any torture under his watch.
Burge has been free on bond since
his five-week trial that ended in June.
The allegations against Burge and
his men even helped shape the state's debate over the death penalty. Former
Illinois Gov. George Ryan released four condemned men from death row in 2003
after Ryan said Burge extracted confessions from them using torture. The
allegations of torture and coerced confessions eventually led to a
still-standing moratorium on Illinois' death penalty. This month, legislators
voted to abolish capital punishment in Illinois. The bill is awaiting the
signature of Gov. Pat Quinn.
Motions filed since Burge's trial
offer a glimpse into how both sides will build their case. Prosecutors argue
that the nature of the violent acts Burge was convicted of lying about should
lengthen his sentence, as should the cost his conduct has had on the city, his
fellow officers and his victims.
Defense lawyers countered that
the sentence sought by prosecutors is "tantamount to life imprisonment"
for Burge, who has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and has a host of other
maladies, including congestive heart failure and chronic bronchitis. His
lawyers also argue that the judge should take into account Burge's military
service and decades fighting crime.
More than 30 people, many of them
police officers, have sent letters to Lefkow asking for leniency, with one
calling Burge a "policeman's policemen." The same man added, "If
my soul was on the way to heaven and Satan made one last attempt for my soul,
Jon Burge would be the person I would want covering my back."
But for the former defendants who
say Burge tortured them into confessions, Burge was no savior.
"He was our al-Qaida, he was
our (Osama) bin Laden in our neighborhood," said Ronald Kitchen, who was
freed from prison after 21 years after it was proven Burge and his men coerced
him into falsely confessing to murder. Kitchen spent 13 years of his sentence
on death row.
"I would love for him to do
21 years of hard time and to feel the loss that I felt and other people have
felt," said Kitchen, who did not testify at Burge's trial.
Burge was fired in 1993 over the
alleged mistreatment of Wilson, but he never was criminally charged in that
case or any other, leading to widespread outrage in Chicago's black
neighborhoods. The anger intensified when Burge moved to Florida and his
alleged victims remained in prison.
___
Associated Press writer Michael
Tarm contributed to this report.
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--Frederick Douglass
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