Out of her hands
TORTURE | Madigan accused of handing cases off, dodging 'moral responsibility'
After five years of fighting to keep Chicago Police torture cases from being reopened, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is seeking to shift responsibility for a handful of the remaining cases to the Cook County state's attorney's office.
In a court motion filed earlier this month, Madigan's chief deputy, Alan Rosen, said the office was willing to continue on eight cases on which it had already invested considerable effort but asked that responsibility for five other cases be returned to State's Attorney Anita Alvarez.
(John H. White/Sun-Times, AP)
Madigan's office has been handling the cases since 2003, when Cook County Chief Criminal Court Judge Paul Biebel found that State's Attorney Richard Devine had a conflict of interest in the torture cases because Devine had once represented Area 2 police Cmdr. Jon Burge, who was charged in October with lying under oath about torturing suspects. Burge was fired in 1993 over torture allegations.
Madigan's effort is opposed by Locke Bowman, legal director of the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University Law School and the lawyer for an inmate who has been granted a hearing on a torture claim. Bowman said one prosecutor should have responsibility for all of the cases and that the issue in all of the cases -- whether convictions based on torture should be allowed to stand -- should be addressed.
"Madigan's attempt to offload some of the cases is a tacit admission that she doesn't have the stomach to get to the heart of the matter," Bowman said in an e-mail. "In many cases, she has resisted hearings on legal technicalities, arguing that torture victims waited too long to present their torture claims or that the claims were barred by earlier decisions" against the inmates that came when much of the Burge scandal still hadn't come out.
"She has failed to come to grips with the need for a fair, systemic approach to resolve these cases," Bowman said. "It is unacceptable in any society of human beings to allow some 25 men to languish in prison following convictions that rest on tortured confessions. Lisa Madigan has the opportunity to right this wrong. If she continues to dodge that legal and moral responsibility, she risks permanent damage to her reputation as a reform-minded official."
Cara Smith, Madigan's deputy chief of staff, called Bowman's allegations "unfounded, grossly misleading and misdirected. . . . Unfortunately, Mr. Bowman chooses to level harsh criticisms at the very office who has worked diligently in pursuit of justice in the cases we've been assigned, and we will continue to do so.
"In every one of the Burge cases that has been assigned to us, we have worked diligently with the facts and the law with the goal of seeking justice," Smith said. "Because the conflict that brought these cases to us no longer exists, we thought it appropriate to request they be put back where they began, which is in the Cook County state's attorney's office."
The motion to transfer the five cases comes weeks after Burge was indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice based on his denial of torture during testimony under oath in a civil case. Burge's trial has been set for next May.
At the same time, Madigan's office is facing evidentiary hearings involving Cortez Brown and Tyshawn Ross, who claim they were tortured. Brown claims he was beaten with a steel flashlight before confessing to a 1990 killing. Ross said he confessed to a 1991 killing only after he was beaten and electroshocked on his thigh near his genitals.
Lawyers for Ross and Brown plan to present evidence of torture.
Burge detectives alleged to have engaged in torture are likely to assert their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if called to testify, fearing that denying misconduct now could result in their being charged. At a recent court hearing, attorney Elizabeth Ekl said her client, retired Detective Daniel McWeeny, would refuse to testify if called in Ross' case.
No Burge detectives were called last year in an evidentiary hearing of abuse claims made by James Andrews, who had been serving a life sentence after being convicted of two 1983 killings. Andrews testified at the hearing that he was mistreated by McWeeny and another detective, Raymond Madigan. The attorney general's office did not call the detectives to testify.
Judge Thomas Sumner found that Andrews' constitutional rights had been violated and vacated both murder convictions. Last February, the attorney general's office dropped the charges, and Andrews was freed. He has filed a lawsuit.