By Steve Rhodes
A few more things I learned from John Conroy about Jon Burge’s testimony last week that the dailies didn’t tell me:
* “[Burge] recalled what seemed minor aspects of cases, casually mentioning, for example, that when Andrew Wilson was arrested, there was a mail carrier in the station who had provided information. (He left out a detail or two in that account: The postal worker was Doris Miller, 45, a neighbor of the Wilsons’, who had never been arrested before, and who later testified that she had been handcuffed to a windowsill in an interview room, was denied access to a toilet for about 14 hours, and ultimately had to relieve herself in an ashtray in front of a man also confined in the room.)”
* “In the morning, he’d told the jury he was the kind of supervisor who would often peek into an interrogation room to monitor his detectives, but in the Wilson case, which may have been the most important case of his career, he told the jury he’d hardly seen Wilson after his arrest, and certainly not after an afternoon lineup. (Wilson describes an electric shock session, and even the assistant state’s attorney who took Wilson’s confession, testifying in the 1992 Police Board hearings, put Burge in the interview room with Wilson immediately after the statement – though the jury doesn’t know that as it hasn’t come into evidence. The assistant state’s attorney has taken the Fifth.)”
* “Burge asked that the jury believe that Anthony Holmes, a man he identified as the ‘barn boss’ in prison, the ‘toughest guy in the penitentiary,’ was ‘quite cooperative’ from the get-go after his arrest. All it took, the former commander said, was a brief interview in which Burge and a homicide detective pointed out Holmes’s predicament, and after that the renowned tough guy gave a statement more than 60 pages long, implicating himself and a good number of his friends, confessing to a series of violent crimes, some of which the Area 2 detectives didn’t know had been committed. (At the outset of the trial, Holmes told a harrowing tale of electric shock and suffocation at Burge’s hands.)”
* And on former Area 2 detective Michael McDermott, who grudgingly took the stand for the prosecution under a grant of immunity and did all he could to soften his testimony in favor of Burge:
“McDermott’s past is littered with cases in which he was alleged to have abused suspects. Juries have acquitted men who allegedly confessed to him. Confessions he has taken have been suppressed by Cook County judges, impressed by allegations that they were coerced. He is probably quite familiar with ‘tremendous pressure.’ But the jury doesn’t know that.”
But you do now, thanks to Conroy.
Duping DuPage
It’s not clear what Jack Tenison does to earn his cushy compensation package as executive director of the nearly empty DuPage National Technology Park, but it is clear why he’s there. He’s Bob Schillerstrom’s guy.
“‘If Chairman Huizenga and Gerry Gorski, who previously served as tech park chairman, have a problem with their employee’s performance, then it is their responsibility to handle the situation appropriately,’ says Schillerstrom, a lawyer who is retiring from his longtime county post. ‘When I appoint individuals like Mr. Huizenga and Mr. Gorski to these appointed bodies, I do so because I believe they are competent individuals who are able to handle the daily operations of their post.”
“Gorski says he began pushing for Tenison’s ouster in 2006.
“‘I determined it was time for him to go,’ says Gorski. ‘Then, I get a telephone call from Bob Schillerstrom, who tells me, Gerry, don’t forget, Jack’s my guy.'”
Governor Gumby
“In the meantime, without paid media pumping out a Quinn message, the governor has been in his Rose Garden,” Carol Marin wrote on Sunday. “Press conferences, announcements of jobs programs and grants have filled his public schedule. Also on his official schedule this past week was an appearance with a former Senate president, Emil Jones.”
Here it comes.
“Jones, you will recall, was one of the few faithful water carriers for our currently indicted former governor, Rod Blagojevich. As a matter of fact, just a couple days ago, Jones’ name popped up in Blago’s federal corruption trial when we learned that Jones was willing to kill an ethics bill if Blago would plop him into Barack’s former U.S. Senate seat. And that Jones backed off and let the bill pass only when Obama himself, feeling heat on the presidential trail, implored Jones to do so.
“How does Quinn, the reformer, explain his newfound attentiveness to Jones, the un-reformer?
“Perhaps it’s simply gratitude. Jones reached into his still-flush campaign kitty in the primary to give Quinn $150,000 in loans. And he still had more than a million bucks left as of six months ago.”
Pat Quinn, Land of Lincoln.
That’s Alexi!
“Most Illinois constitutional officers already offer their employees who are in same-sex domestic partnership the benefits included in an executive order signed by state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias,” the Springfield State Journal-Register reported over the weekend.
As the Illinois Republican Party points out in an e-mail blast this morning, the Sun-Times reported on June 13 that “[Giannoulias’s] order makes the office the first constitutional Illinois state office or state agency to adopt such a policy and one of only nine states and the District of Columbia to implement leave-related benefits for domestic partners, Giannoulias said. He hopes other state offices will take the same action.”
In other news, Giannoulias announced his office will become the first to offer Monday through Friday schedules with weekends off and daily lunch breaks. He hopes other state offices will follow his lead.
Travel Ethic
The Grand Targhee Resort paid Sun-Times police department reporter Frank Main for this story.
Obama “Spiritual Manager” A Venezuelan Tyrant
In Beachwood Op-Art.
How To Steal
In I Am A Security Guard.
Lou’s To-Do List
In The Cub Factor.
Don’t Be Fooled By The White Sox
“Can the Sox beat crappy National League teams? Of course they can, and we’ve known this all along; not because they are any good, but because this year’s Sox were built to be a crappy National League team in the first place,” writes our very own Andrew Reilly in The White Sox Report.
Mayor Stone?
“Stone can even almost make listening to White Sox broadcasts with Hawk Harrelson tolerable. Almost. He’s smart, but he’s not a miracle worker,” we write at Agony & Ivy.
Reading With Scissors
Collectibles and pegetables.
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The Beachwood Tip Line: Petting allowed.
Posted on June 21, 2010