CHICAGO (AP) — As a decorated Chicago police lieutenant, Jon Burge prided himself on sending bad guys to prison by getting them to confess to terrible crimes — and by committing terrible crimes himself in the process, prosecutors say. Now, having been convicted of lying about the violent means he and his men used to get confessions, it is Burge's turn to face prison time.
With the sentencing hearing for Burge scheduled to
start Thursday, prosecutors say his perjury and obstruction of justice
convictions add up to 30-plus years in federal prison. Defense attorneys are
arguing for less than two years for the 63-year-old former commander whose name
has become synonymous with police brutality in the nation's third-largest city.
Both sides will call witnesses, and U.S. District
Judge Joan Lefkow will decide whether to also allow testimony from outside
groups with an interest in a case that's been nearly 40 years in the making.
The hearing is expected to last two days.
Dozens of suspects — almost all of them black men —
claimed for decades that Burge and his officers tortured them into confessing
to crimes ranging from armed robbery to murder. Prosecutors presented testimony
at trial from five men — Anthony Holmes, Melvin Jones, Andrew Wilson, Gregory
Banks and Shadeed Mu'min — who claimed Burge or his men put plastic bags over
their heads until they passed out, stuck guns in their mouths or shocked them
with electric currents.
Burge was charged with lying about the alleged
torture in a lawsuit filed by former death row inmate Madison Hobley, who was
sentenced to death for a 1987 fire that killed seven people, including his wife
and son. Hobley was later pardoned.
Hobley claimed detectives put a plastic typewriter
cover over his head to make it impossible for him to breathe. Burge denied
knowing anything about the "bagging" or taking part in it. The
indictment against Burge never said Hobley was tortured, instead accusing Burge
of lying with respect to participating in or knowing of any torture under his
watch.
Burge has been free on bond since his five-week
trial that ended in June.
The allegations against Burge and his men even
helped shape the state's debate over the death penalty. Former Illinois Gov.
George Ryan released four condemned men from death row in 2003 after Ryan said
Burge extracted confessions from them using torture. The allegations of torture
and coerced confessions eventually led to a still-standing moratorium on
Illinois' death penalty. This month, legislators voted to abolish capital
punishment in Illinois. The bill is awaiting the signature of Gov. Pat Quinn.
Motions filed since Burge's trial offer a glimpse
into how both sides will build their case. Prosecutors argue that the nature of
the violent acts Burge was convicted of lying about should lengthen his
sentence, as should the cost his conduct has had on the city, his fellow
officers and his victims.
Defense lawyers countered that the sentence sought
by prosecutors is "tantamount to life imprisonment" for Burge, who
has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and has a host of other maladies,
including congestive heart failure and chronic bronchitis. His lawyers also
argue that the judge should take into account Burge's military service and
decades fighting crime.
More than 30 people, many of them police officers,
have sent letters to Lefkow asking for leniency, with one calling Burge a
"policeman's policemen." The same man added, "If my soul was on
the way to heaven and Satan made one last attempt for my soul, Jon Burge would
be the person I would want covering my back."
But for the former defendants who say Burge
tortured them into confessions, Burge was no savior.
"He was our al-Qaida, he was our (Osama) bin
Laden in our neighborhood," said Ronald Kitchen, who was freed from prison
after 21 years after it was proven Burge and his men coerced him into falsely
confessing to murder. Kitchen spent 13 years of his sentence on death row.
"I would love for him to do 21 years of hard
time and to feel the loss that I felt and other people have felt," said
Kitchen, who did not testify at Burge's trial.
Burge was fired in 1993 over the alleged
mistreatment of Wilson, but he never was criminally charged in that case or any
other, leading to widespread outrage in Chicago's black neighborhoods. The
anger intensified when Burge moved to Florida and his alleged victims remained
in prison.
Associated Press writer Michael Tarm contributed to
this report.
Copyright
2011 The Associated Press.
(AP
Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)
