By Steve Rhodes

“Dead men play prominently in the Burge trial, each side using their own,” John Conroy reports for Vocalo this morning.
More significantly, Conroy reports that on Friday “Judge Lefkow ruled that former assistant state’s attorney Larry Hyman and retired police officers Michael Hoke, Thomas McKenna, Ronald Boffo, James Pienta, John Paladino, Dave Dioguardi, and Leonard Bajenski could indeed claim the Fifth. As the judge’s order is sealed and the grilling on the question took place behind closed doors, I can’t explain her rationale here. On Monday, the attorneys for those men will appear in the courtroom at 12:30 to discuss what portions of the order should remain sealed. In any event, the jury will not see the eight men at all, not even to take the stand and decline to testify.”

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Posted on June 8, 2010

By Steve Rhodes

1. “The two teams get a three-day break before playing Game 6 in Philadelphia – odds and a Total are forthcoming,” Sports Betting Live reports.
“History is not on the Blackhawks’ side however, as they are 1-11 straight up in Philly dating back to February of 1996 and are currently amidst a 10-game road losing streak in the City of Brotherly Love.
“Flyers netminder Michael Leighton has struggled in the Stanley Cup but has been a rock at home, going 14-1 SU at the Wachovia Center in 2010.”

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Posted on June 7, 2010

By Natasha Julius

The year’s half over, but some of the biggest stories are only just beginning.
Market Update
Investors panicked this week as analysts projected that the unprecedented run on gold may be about to end. Sources say current demand may fade away sometime within the next year.
Half Baked
The judge presiding over the corruption case of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich said this week he is unlikely to alter the schedule to suit the needs of the defendant. Blago confusingly responded, “I always look at it as the glass is half full.” Unfortunately, Rod, when the glass is half full of taxpayers’ money, not even the honest crooks get to leave early.

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Posted on June 5, 2010

By Steve Rhodes

Isn’t there some sort of civil penalty a judge can levy for purposefully trying to get out of jury duty?
*
From Chip Rowe’s How To Get Out of Jury Duty:
I’m allergic to justice.
I get dizzy if I try to weigh evidence.
An eye for an eye? I say we take his head for an eye! (Point at defendant)

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Posted on June 4, 2010

By Steve Rhodes

The Burge trial will not resume again until Monday because Judge Joan Lefkow is tending to another case. Of course, you won’t learn this from the papers. I found out from a friend. In the papers, the Burge trial will just disappear for a few days, and then reappear somewhere behind RIchard Roeper’s column or just before the obits.
*
Nonetheless, John Conroy found something worthy to write about today. From his post “What If It’s Torture But Not Perjury?”
“In raising the question of whether perjury actually occurred, [defense attorney William] Gamboney was playing to a broad audience. He told the jury that they’d have a hard time believing the criminals who were going to claim torture. Of course if the jury didn’t believe the men scheduled to testify, then they couldn’t conclude that perjury had been committed. But just in case some member of the jury did indeed think the abuse had taken place, Gamboney opened the door to a ‘not-guilty’ verdict by arguing that the government would not be able to prove that Burge was sworn to tell the truth on the interrogatories. Thus you could think Burge was a torturer and a liar, but if you didn’t believe he had taken an oath to tell the truth on these particular documents, then he could have lied throughout and you couldn’t convict him of perjury.”

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Posted on June 3, 2010

By Steve Rhodes

“Mayor Daley hates questions about why, when he was the state’s attorney and his first assistant was Dick Devine – who would become the state’s attorney – they didn’t investigate allegations of torture by Burge and his boys,” Carol Marin wrote two Sundays ago. “That was 28 years ago, when photographs show police killer Andrew Wilson’s face looked normal going into an interrogation room, but looked pounded and puffy just hours later.
“If that was a tragically missed opportunity to stop the torture of black men by white cops on the city’s South and West sides, there were many other opportunities that we in media and others in power took a pass on.”
The media on the whole still appears uninterested.

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Posted on June 2, 2010

By Steve Rhodes

1. This made the rounds over the weekend – and rightly so: Fountain Tribute To Blackhawks A Ghastly Delight.
2. “When is a half gallon container of orange juice not 64 ounces? When it’s Tropicana!”
3. “Crack open a beer this summer. Please,” writes Jeremy Mullman of Ad Age. “The $100 billion U.S. brewing industry is staggering into its crucial selling season from its weakest position in years.”

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Posted on June 1, 2010

By Natasha Julius

Memorial Day Barbecue Guide
It’s looking like a glorious holiday weekend, so the Beachwood Reporter Celebratory Barbecue Unit has prepared its annual guide to making the most of the extra day off. Here are some suggestions to get your first backyard party of the season going in full gear.
1. Invite everyone. You know they’ll be there anyway, so why not make it official? Sure, you might wind up blowing your budget, but at least it won’t all go to inflated lapels, eh Nancy?

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Posted on May 29, 2010

By Steve Rhodes

“As Melvin Jones stood half naked, handcuffed to a wall, former Chicago Police Lt. Jon Burge allegedly attached an electrical device to his penis and sent such a painful shock to his groin Jones said he can barely talk about it nearly 30 years later,” the Sun-Times reports.
“I was just thinking he was a mad man,” Jones said.

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Posted on May 28, 2010

By Steve Rhodes

“‘You expect to get beat up by the police, but you don’t expect to get electrocuted or shocked,” [Anthony] Holmes said Wednesday, the first day of Burge’s federal jury trial on perjury and obstruction of justice charges,” the Sun-Times reports.
*
“In the chronology of victims assembled in the last 20 years, Holmes is the first to have alleged he was given electric shock at Burge’s hands,” John Conroy notes at the Burge trial blog he’s writing for Vocalo. “Unlike other victims whose claims became known through documents filed by the victim or his attorney, Holmes’s story became public because of a chain of events, set in motion by an anonymous police officer, 16 years after Holmes was wired up.”

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Posted on May 27, 2010