By Steve Rhodes
1. “Decades after torture allegations were first leveled against former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge’s ‘Midnight Crew,’ a federal jury convicted him Monday on all three counts of obstruction of justice and perjury for lying about the torture in a civil lawsuit,” the Tribune reports.
Assignment Desk: Why did it take decades for Burge to be prosecuted? Please trace the route this case took, and who else obstructed justice every step of the way. From U.S. Attorneys to police officers to City Hall.
2. “The Burge verdict is a major victory for the U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and the prosecutors who argued the case before Judge Joan Lefkow and a slap in the face of Cook County State’s Attorneys who repeatedly turned a blind eye to the torture,” John Conroy writes.
“The prosecution came 37 years after Burge first used electric shock to interrogate Anthony Holmes and decades after county prosecutors had evidence that serious crimes had been and were being committed by Burge and detectives under his command. Even as a dozen men awaited execution on the basis of suspect confessions, county prosecutors declined to investigate whether those confessions had been coerced and whether detectives had perjured themselves in testifying about how those statements had been extracted.”
Even as a dozen men awaited execution.
What say you, former Cook County State’s Attorney Richard M. Daley?
Posted on June 29, 2010