By Bethel Habte
\nMedill News Service<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll tell you about his sweet tooth. He\u2019ll tell you about the black dachshund named Tiny he’s adopted. And if you ask, Darrell Cannon will tell you about the time he was tortured by Chicago police officers.<\/p>\n
In 1983, Cannon was a suspect in a murder case. After his arrest, Cannon said former Sergeant John Byrne and former Detective Peter Dignan coerced a confession from him, chipping his teeth, splitting his lip, playing Russian Roulette on him with a shot gun, and sticking electric cattle prods to his mouth and genitals in the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing can undo what has been done to me,\u201d Cannon said in an interview. Cannon pled innocent but was convicted, based on his confession, and given a life sentence. During the course of a lengthy legal battle, Cannon\u2019s lawyers unearthed 28 other similar claims of abuse and he was released from prison in 2007. He used this evidence to demonstrate that his confession was coerced. His murder conviction was dismissed.<\/p>\n
Cannon is one of more than 110, mostly African American, victims who have said they were tortured into false confessions by police<\/a> under the authority of former Area 2 police commander Jon Burge between 1972 and 1991.<\/p>\n Anthony Holmes\u2019 testimony contributed to Burge\u2019s eventual conviction. At Burge’s trial, Holmes said Burge and former Detective John Yucaitis slurred racial epithets while using a black, electric shock box and suffocating him with a plastic bag to coerce a confession.<\/p>\n \u201cI only had a couple bruises on my arm and a busted lip. But the rest of the injuries were internal from the electricity shot through me with the black box and Burge choking me with the plastic bag,\u201d Holmes said during his testimony. \u201cHe tried to kill me. It leaves a gnawing, hurting feeling. I can\u2019t ever shake it.\u201d<\/p>\n Holmes was a gang leader “convicted of participating in a murder” and “his confession the only\u00a0evidence\u00a0against him,” according to WBEZ<\/a>.\u00a0 Paroled in 1983, he was arrested\u00a0a few months later for selling drugs and paroled in 2004, WBEZ reported in 2010.<\/p>\n The City Council voted Wednesday to approve a package that will award $5.5 million torture victims. The package also provides for counseling for victims and their families, the inclusion of the history of the torture to be taught in Chicago Public Schools, and free college tuition at City Colleges for children and grandchildren of victims.<\/p>\n Burge was fired in 1993 after an internal investigation. In 2006, Cook County prosecutors found evidence of systemic abuse under Burge\u2019s tenure. In 2011, Burge was sentenced to four and a half years in federal prison and house arrest for three counts of perjury and obstruction of justice. He was released on Feb. 13, 2015. \u00a0A\u00a0 statute of limitations prevented any further legal action. He pled not-guilty in his case, maintains his innocence to this day and collects $4,000 per month<\/a> in pension.<\/p>\n In a verified interview with Chicago-based blogger Martin Preib last month, Burge launched his condemnation of the reparations effort and the people involved.<\/p>\n \u201cI find it hard to believe that the City’s political leadership could even contemplate giving \u2018Reparations\u2019 to human vermin like them,\u201d Burge stated. \u201cI believe I and all the outstanding men and women I had the privilege of working with, as well as the Chicago Police Department itself, will be vindicated.\u201d<\/p>\n Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow presided over Burge\u2019s 2011 case. Before sentencing Burge, Lefkow described<\/a> the effects of coerced confessions on the legal system.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen a confession is coerced, the truth of the confession is called into question. When this becomes widespread, as one can infer from the accounts that have been presented here in this court, the administration of justice is undermined irreparably. How can one trust that justice will be served when the justice system has been so defiled?\u201c<\/p>\n Years of legal action and activism have led the city to make amends to the victims.<\/p>\n Jon Burge was born\u00a0in 1947 and grew up in South Deering, which at the time was a mostly white, working class community on the South Side of Chicago.<\/p>\n In his early 20s, Burge served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam as an investigator on a large military base called Dong Tam.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a sexy part of the narrative that Burge went to Vietnam, and \u2018learned\u2019 the tools of torture and brought it back,\u201d said Andrew Baer, Ph.D. candidate in history at Northwestern University and a doctoral fellow at the American Bar Association. \u201cI think it\u2019s slightly misleading.\u201d<\/p>\n Baer\u2019s dissertation focuses on Burge, who he\u2019s been researching since 2009. Burge, Baer said, may have heard rumors of electric shock treatment in Vietnam, but mainly dealt with American troops and says there is no evidence to support those rumors. While Baer\u00a0 condemns Burge and his actions, he sees Burge as a reflection of widespread discrimination in northern states.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not just a story of a rogue cop or a bad apple,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Burge torture cases are representative of a larger post-war race and policing story.\u201d<\/p>\n While Baer said Jim Crow was a form of racial discrimination in the American South, it wasn\u2019t exclusive to parts of the former confederacy.<\/p>\n \u201cRacism still flourished in the north,\u201d he said. \u201cOne way it manifested was in policing.\u201d<\/p>\n With the exception of a few Latinos, all the claimants in the torture cases are black. In multiple accounts, victims reported that officers used racial epithets, including the n-word, against them.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were some personal motivations and driving factors why a man like Jon Burge might torture African American suspects \u2013 call it racism, call it prejudice,\u201d Baer said. \u201cBut there were also institutional and structural motivations that would encourage certain types of misconduct.\u201d<\/p>\n Baer explained that police, prosecutors and politicians were under pressure to appear tough on crime. While Chicago\u2019s homicide rate was 245<\/a> in 2014, it was far higher in the 70s. The city saw 970<\/a> homicides in 1974, nearly 75 percent more than today.<\/p>\n Pressure especially built in high profile, or \u201cheater\u201d cases.<\/p>\n \u201cThese were cases where there was intense pressure to close them,\u201d Baer said. \u201cNot just to find a suspect and arrest him, but to guarantee conviction.\u201d<\/p>\n Confessions are the surest way to get there.<\/p>\n Under Burge\u2019s watch, Andrew Wilson<\/a> was arrested for the murder of two police officers on Valentine\u2019s Day in 1982. After an interrogation, police brought Wilson to Cermak Health Service, a Cook County prison medical center.<\/p>\n After examining and treating<\/a> Wilson on Feb. 15 and 16, Dr. John M. Raba wrote a letter to Richard J. Brzeczek, superintendent of police at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cAndrew Wilson had several blisters on his right thigh, right cheek and anterior chest which were consistent with radiator burns. He stated that he had been cuffed to a radiator and pushed into it,\u201d Raba stated in the letter. \u201cHe also stated that electric shocks had been administered to his gums, lips, and genitals.\u201d<\/p>\n Raba closes the letter<\/a> by saying Brzeczek should initiate a \u201cthorough investigation of this alleged brutality.\u201d<\/p>\n Brzeczek initiated an internal investigation. He then wrote a letter to then Cook County State\u2019s Attorney Richard M. Daley, with Raba\u2019s letter attached.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause the person in question is one of the defendants in a matter presently pending before the Criminal Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County, I am seeking your direction as to how the department should proceed in the investigation of these allegations,\u201d Brzeczek stated, continuing that he doesn\u2019t want to \u201cjeopardize the prosecution\u2019s case in any way.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilson was convicted. The Illinois Supreme Court threw out the conviction in 1987, suspicious of the integrity of the confession. Then Wilson was convicted without the confession and sentenced to\u00a0life in prison, where he died.<\/p>\n Flint Taylor, partner at the People\u2019s Law Office, found out about the Burge case when his firm began to represent Wilson, Taylor said in a interview with Medill Reports.<\/p>\n It was during the 1989 civil rights suit against the city that the People\u2019s Law Office received an anonymous letter saying that Wilson wasn\u2019t the only one who was tortured in Area 2.<\/p>\n Many of the torture victims filed \u201cmotions to suppress\u201d shortly after they were charged. These were legal attempts to retract their tainted confessions from their records.<\/p>\n Those documents, their testimony, police reports and the testimony of family members are among the pieces of evidence victims will use to back up their claims against the state, said Joey Mogul, partner at the People\u2019s Law Office and cofounder of the organization the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have findings and admissions made by the city that acknowledged that Burge not only engaged in torture, but that he and his men engaged in this pattern of torture,\u201d Mogul said. \u201cThat is how we were able to get this reparations package, because the city could not deny with any credibility whatsoever that this didn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t come without a fight.<\/p>\n Activist groups including Project NIA, We Charge Genocide, and Amnesty International have put pressure on City Hall to pass the ordinance.<\/p>\n \u201cPairing with Amnesty International was a really an important way to spread the word,\u201d said Shubra Ohri, attorney at the People\u2019s Law Office and member of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials. \u201cThey\u2019ve incorporated the Burge torture survivors as a part of their national campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n Activists also brought the case to the international stage.<\/p>\n In November 2014, We Charge Genocide brought<\/a> the Burge case before the U.N. Committee Against Torture in Geneva. The committee called for prompt review of allegations of police torture, try those accused, and provide rehabilitation to survivors. The committee also expressly supported the original reparations ordinance.<\/p>\nWho is Jon Burge?<\/h1>\n
How were these cases brought to light?<\/h1>\n
Redress<\/h1>\n