Prosecutors Attack Innocence Project
Chicago Prosecutors’ Innocence Project Vendetta
Why are Chicago prosecutors hounding a group of journalism students? The Chicago Tribune on Monday had a story about the Innocence Project, an initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in which students seek to gather evidence of wrongful convictions. In their latest investigation, the Medill students discovered new evidence that they say shows Anthony McKinney, found guilty for murdering a security guard in 1978, didn’t actually commit the crime. McKinney has spent 31 years in prison, and as a result of this development has won a new hearing that could eventually lead to his release. But rather than focus on the details of the case, the Cook County state’s attorney has turned with a vengeance on the students, the professor and the Innocence Project itself, seeking to show that the students are promised good grades if they free the inmates in the cases they are working on. According to the Tribune:
The Cook County state’s attorney subpoenaed the students’ grades, notes and recordings of witness interviews, the class syllabus and even e-mails they sent to each other and to professor David Protess of the university’s Medill School of Journalism.
Northwestern has turned over documents related to on-the-record interviews with witnesses that students conducted, as well as copies of audio and videotapes, Protess said.
But the school is fighting the effort to get grades and grading criteria, evaluations of student performance, expenses incurred during the inquiry, the syllabus, e-mails, unpublished student memos, and interviews not conducted on the record, or where witnesses weren’t willing to be recorded.
“I don’t think it’s any of the state’s business to know the state of mind of my students,” Protess said. “Prosecutors should be more concerned with the wrongful conviction of Anthony McKinney than with my students’ grades.”
The Innocence Projects, now scattered across the country, have thrown a lifeline to people who have been wrongly locked up, some of them for years. The project began at Medill with David Protess, a professor and former journalist. Protess, a private detective, and a group of undergraduates take on case after case, fanning out through the city and gathering fresh evidence that has so far resulted in finding 11 people innocent of charges that sent them to prison. Next to the projects that provide defense to people on death row, it is one of the most remarkable reform efforts in America’s often-unfair criminal justice system.
Taken from Mother Jones on Oct. 20th 2009 <http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/10/chicago-prosecutors-innocence-project-vendetta>
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Family In Little Village Claim CPD Assaulted Autistic Son
Cops decline to discuss incident which they say is under investigation
By Angela Rozas | Chicago Tribune
Days after Chicago police promoted their expanded training for dealing with people with autism, a teen with the disorder was allegedly struck by an officer who ignored the family’s pleas that he was a “special boy.”
While Chicago police refused to discuss the incident, relatives of Oscar Guzman detailed the alleged assault and said it was an example of why more officers need to be trained in handling people with special needs.
Guzman, 16, was standing on the sidewalk Wednesday night, taking a break from working in his family’s fast-food restaurant in the Pilsen neighborhood. He was watching cars go by when a police cruiser pulled up and two officers began asking him questions, his family says.
Guzman didn’t understand the questions, said his sister Nubia, 25, and looked down, away and eventually began walking away. Diagnosed with moderate autism at age 4, he doesn’t like confrontation, his sister said.
The officers went after him, his family said, prompting the frightened boy to run into the family restaurant, yelling “I’m a special boy!” as he fled, his sister said.
Despite Guzman’s parents yelling to the officers that he was a “special boy” with “special needs,” one of the officers struck Guzman in the head with a baton, cutting a gash that would require eight staples, his sister said. The parents witnessed the blow being struck, she said.
On the ground, blood pouring from his head, Guzman, who has the mental capacity of a 5th grader, mumbled again and again, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I submit. I submit,” his family said.
The Police Department confirmed the incident is under investigation but declined to give the officers’ version of what happened. The Independent Police Review Authority said it is investigating and has interviewed relatives of the boy.
The family said it is considering filing a lawsuit against the officers.
The incident occurred the same week the department promoted its award-winning Crisis Intervention Team, a program to train officers to recognize the needs of citizens with mental illness or disabilities. More than 1,100 of the department’s 13,500 officers have gone through the 40-hour training since its inception in 2004. The program has won national praise, and just last month, its leader received a Chicago police departmental commendation for the team’s work.
To mark Autism Awareness month, the department held its first Autism Safety Awareness night with the Easter Seals on Monday and sent out a six-page training memo to all sworn personnel on autism and police responses. The department also handed out thousands of index cards with tips on how to handle people with autism and distributed buttons for officers to wear.
The department also now trains new recruits in dealing with people with mental disabilities.
While he could not speak to what happened Wednesday, Officer Jerald Nelson, a member of the Crisis Intervention Team who has an 18-year-old son with autism, said the department has been working to better train officers on how to handle people with autism.
“To recognize it, that’s number one,” Nelson said. Some characteristics of autism — avoiding eye contact, not responding to questions — are the same trouble signs that officers are taught to look for in suspects, he said. But officers could make a situation worse if they don’t recognize the difference between suspects and those with disabilities. Touching someone with autism lightly can agitate them, for instance, and certain restraints can even endanger them, Nelson said.
One in 160 children has a diagnosis of autism, Nelson said. Statistics show that officers are seven times more likely to have contact with a developmentally disabled person than the general public.
Colleen Shinn, training specialist and manager of the Autism Program service centers for the Easter Seals Metropolitan Chicago, said the department has made strides in developing autism training.
“I think it’s great they’re being proactive,” she said. “There’s more work to be done.”
But two days after the incident, Guzman’s family says not enough has been done. They want the officers involved fired.
“It’s upsetting. Shouldn’t they all be getting trained for this?” said Nubia Guzman.
She worries her brother is scarred. Guzman, who never had trouble with police, has cried at odd moments since Wednesday night, his family said.
He drew a picture of the incident, displaying the angry face of a towering officer holding what looks like a bat over a cowering figure. On Friday he described the incident in clipped phrases to a reporter.
“Something terrible happened,” the teen said. “One chased me. Killing. Killing unnecessary people. Innocent. Beating people with the stick. It’s terrible. … It’s going to heal. I’m all right.”
His mother, who was always protective of him and had to be persuaded to let him walk to his favorite Chinese restaurant down the street, said she now fears letting the teen out of her sight.
“This time they hit him. The next time, they may kill him,” Maria Guzman said.
More Action to Support Police Torture victims in Chicago
6 years is too long to wait!
Rally, Press Conference, & Peoples Delegation:
Tell Lisa Madigan that Burge torture victims deserve new trials!
April 6, noon
Thompson Center, 100 W. Randolph (at Clark)
In April 2003, Attorney General Lisa Madigan was appointed to oversee the cases of dozens of police torture victims under former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, who goes on trial in May.
For nearly six years, the prisoners and their families, activists, and attorneys having been asking the Attorney General to initiate evidentiary hearings for men who faced electro-shock, suffocation, beatings and mock executions in Area 2 and Area 3 police interrogation rooms.
While President Obama has ordered the closing of Guantanamo Prison due to international outcry over torture, Lisa Madigan has allowed dozens of Chicago police torture victims, all of whom are African-American, to languish in prison in Obama’s backyard.
In 2007, the Cook County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution calling on Madigan to initiate new hearings for all police torture victims. It is now March of 2009 and she has still refused to take substantial action. Even more disturbing, on April 7 2009, rather than grant relief to torture victims, she is hoping that a judge will allow her to pass five of the torture cases to new States Attorney Anita Alvarez.
With Lisa Madigan gearing up for a run for Governor, it’s time for her to take responsibility for the Burge torture cases. No public official who condones torture is fit to be in the State’s highest office. Join exonerated torture victims, activists, attorneys, and family members for a rally, press conference, and a people’s delegation to Lisa Madigan’s office to tell her:
* Six years is to long to wait! Police torture victims deserve new trials immediately.
For more information or to co-sponsor this event, call 773.955.4841 or email julien@nodeathpenalty.org 312.623.1602 or email joshua.brollier@gmail.com
Campaign to End the Death Penalty
Northside Action for Justice- Copwatch
Voices for Creative Non-Violence
About 30 people rallied in front of Cook County Courthouse last Friday in response to a call from the Campaign Against the Death Penalty.
By Sergio Barreto | Chicago Progressive Examiner
March 2, 2009
After hearing testimony from Darrell Cannon and Anthony Holmes, who spent decades in prison based on confessions extracted by torture on the watch of then-Police Area 2 Cmdr. Jon Burge, they filed into a courtroom to witness an attempt by Attorney General Lisa Madigan to wash her hands off of five Burge torture cases.
Madigan’s office was appointed to oversee Chicago police torture cases in 2003, when Judge Paul Biebel ruled that then-Cook County State’s Attorney Richard Devine had a conflict of interest because he had represented Burge in a civil lawsuit while in private practice.
Madigan herself didn’t appear in court, but her representatives argued that the conflict of interest no longer exists because Devine was recently replaced by Anita Alvarez. They also covered their bases by claiming that they couldn’t handle the cases due to budget cuts. The hearing lasted about an hour, and Biebel said he needed time to review the request.
Attorney Locke Bowman of the MacArthur Justice Center, who represents some of the torture victims, said it’s “not technically true” to argue that the state’s attorney office no longer has a conflict of interest. “The conflict didn’t occur simply because Devine had personal involvement with Burge,” he said. “The conflict infected everybody at the state’s attorney office in this issue. Judge Biebel recognized this in 2003 when he ordered the cases transferred to Madigan’s office.”
For Bowman, the long history of failure to give a fair and full inquiry to his clients’ claims has grown tiresome. “The cases of Burge victims all share a common legal and moral problem,” he said. “Somebody’s gotta get their arms around this issue.”
Ald. Ed Smith (28th) joined the chorus of condemnation on Wednesday with an angry letter urging Madigan to take responsibility for the cases and warning that failing to do so may come back to haunt her.
If this is shifted back, it’s gonna get lost in the cracks, put on the back burner and nothing will happen. Those people who are in jail will remain in jail. I want her to follow these cases to fruition and make sure that justice is served from her office. […]
Our community is still upset about these cases. It could give the impression that she just wants to walk away and let it go. It could be an adversity if she ran again.
Biebel is expected to issue a ruling on April 7.
Illegal Searches
As a part of our mission CopWatch is dedicated to educating the people about their rights concerning the police.
If you are stopped by the police:
- The police have the right to do a pat search.
- Pat searches do not include searching of pockets, inside the waist band, or the removal of any clothing.
- An officer has to have “probable cause” or a warrent to search you, your vehicle, or any of your possessions (e.g. a bag, or purse, etc.)
- You have the right to ask why the officer is searching you. You have a right to know the “probable cause.”
- Refusal of a search does NOT constitute “probable cause.”
- If the police search your pockets, waistline, shoes, mouth, bag, car, etc. without “probable cause” your rights have been infringed.
- DO NOT RESIST THE POLICE PHYSICALLY (but keep saying “I do not consent to this search.”)
- If the police harm your person or you feel that you may have been sexually harmed REPORT IT.
Northside CopWatch can be reached via e-mail at AforJCOPWATCH@gmail.com or by phone at (312)-623-1602 if you feel that you are a victim of an illegal search of any kind please call or e-mail us and we will help you file a complaint.
Justice for Jon Burge’s Victims?
By Salim Muwakkil
U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald dominates the news these days for his arrest and probe of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. But the aggressive prosecutor is also pursuing a case that finally may bring justice to an infamous story of nearly two decades of police abuse in which more than 100 black men were gruesomely tortured.
Last October, Fitzgerald arrested and indicted Jon Burge, a retired Chicago police commander long accused of leading a corps of torturing cops. Fitzgerald charged Burge with obstruction of justice and perjury in a three-count indictment.
At a news conference, he said Burge “broke the law when he was supposed to uphold it,” and he warned that others who lied about torture could eventually be charged.
According to several independent investigations, between 1972 and 1991, Burge and detectives under his command routinely tortured black males. A 2006 probe led by a court-appointed special prosecutor found that Burge and his men used torture techniques that included electro-shocks to the genitals, burning skin on radiators and mock suffocations with plastic bags. However, the statute of limitations prevented prosecution.
Fitzgerald’s indictment hurdles that legal barrier by charging Burge with perjury instead of actual torture. While answering questions in a 2003 lawsuit filed by one of the alleged victims, Burge denied using torture methods. The recent indictment cites those answers as evidence.
Fitzgerald’s action justifies the strategy pushed by attorneys for many of Burge’s victims, who felt frustrated by the special prosecutor’s report that detailed torture, but provided a legal sanctuary.
The charges also echo a strategy urged by five Chicago City Council members in a Sept. 20, 2007, letter to Fitzgerald. “We believe that federal prosecution of Burge and his men is possible and that the five-year federal statue of limitations would not be a bar,” they wrote. “Burge and the others could be prosecuted for perjury, for obstruction of justice and for an ongoing conspiracy to cover up their torture scheme.”
Although Fitzgerald’s action indicates progress, members of the group Black People Against Police Torture are not mollified.
“Burge is still free,” says Patricia Hill, executive director of the African American Police League.
Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan freed four death row inmates after he concluded their confessions were brutally and illegally coerced. More than 25 inmates remain imprisoned because of confessions extracted in Burge’s torture chambers.
The latest wrinkle in the saga is the news that the local Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), which represents thousands of officers below the rank of sergeant, voted to pay for Burge’s defense in his upcoming federal trial on perjury and obstruction of justice.
G. Flint Taylor, an attorney for the Chicago-based People’s Law Office, who has pursued the Burge case for more than two decades, calls the FOP’s action “outrageous.”
The notorious police union has long been an outspoken Burge supporter. In 1993, the group provoked controversy by attempting to enter a float honoring Burge into the South Side St. Patrick’s Day parade.
By footing Burge’s legal bills, Taylor says, the FOP “continues a sordid and racist history for … the FOP of defending police torture in the city.”
But the police group itself is also being sued for its support of Burge. One current and one former Chicago cop, both African Americans, recently filed a lawsuit against the FOP for racial discrimination. They say the union refused to pay their legal fees, while at the same time funding Burge’s defense.
In the face of such plausible charges of police torture, it may seem odd that a group representing the forces of law and order would willingly associate with the torture ringleader. But Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police apparently has another motive.
“The FOP was created in the 1960s by the South Side Irish to protect the fraternity of what was mostly Irish cops in those days,” explains Brendan Shiller, an attorney for one of the black police officers suing the group. “Although the police force has become a bit more diverse since then, there has been little change in its political power dynamics, and the FOP’s agenda reflects those persisting forces.”
Despite those complications, Fitzgerald’s aggressive indictment gives hope to many that Burge and his boys may finally face the music, even if the song is a bit out of tune.
Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor of In These Times, where he has worked since 1983. He is currently a Crime and Communities Media Fellow of the Open Society Institute, examining the impact of ex-inmates and gang leaders in leadership positions in the black community.
Police and Fire Committee Meeting (Feb. 6th, 2009)
Alderman Isaac Carothers grills Police Superintendent Jody Weis and Commander Robert Klimas of the Chicago Police Internal Affairs about a theft at police headquarters in December 2008.
Copwatch joins with others to put pressure on Lisa Madigan to grant new trials for police torture victims
Why is Lisa Madigan Passing the Buck?
Tell her to initiate hearings for police torture victims NOW!
What: Picket & pack the courtroom
Where: Cook County Courthouse, 26th & California
When: Friday, Feb. 20, 1 PM
“I can promise that as Attorney General, I will never cover up the truth and stand in the way of justice”, Lisa Madigan- campaign news release, Sept. 23, 2002
Attorney General Lisa Madigan is on the wrong side of history. While President Obama has ordered the closing of Guantanamo Prison due to international outcry over torture, Madigan has allowed dozens of Chicago police torture victims, all of whom are African-American, to languish in prison in Obama’s backyard.
Madigan was appointed nearly six years ago as a special prosecutor to oversee the cases of men who endured torture at the hands of Chicago police commander Jon Burge and his minions. Burge was indicted last October, and judges,special prosecutors, and even the police’s own investigative body, the Office of Professional Standards (OPS), have concluded that his detectives carried out numerous acts of torture using interrogation techniques such as electro-shock, suffocation, and mock executions to extract confessions.
Yet Madigan has failed to initiate evidentiary hearings for police torture victims despite two reports, several requests for meetings, and a number of protests at her office by attorneys, community activists and prisoners’ family members calling on her to do the right thing. In 2007, the Cook County Board of Commissioners even passed a resolution calling on her to initiate evidentiary hearings for all Burge torture victims.
Instead, Lisa Madigan is passing the buck. Rather than ask Judge Paul Biebel for evidentiary hearings, she has filed a motion to re-assign five of her cases to States Attorney Anita Alvarez. It’s time to tell Lisa Madigan that ALL torture cases need to be dealt with, and that ALL torture victims deserve new trials.
Join us for a picket and help us pack the courtroom.
For more information, call 773-955-4841 or email julien@nodeathpenalty.org
Event will be co-sponsored by:
Campaign to End the Death Penalty
Eight Day Center for Justice
Northside Action for Justice Copwatch
Francis of Assisi Catholic Worker House
Voices for Creative Non-Violence
Northside Copwatch 