Timeline
These archives form a digital history based on documents from the People’s Law Office, which has represented more than a dozen survivors of former police Cmdr. Jon Burge and those who served under his command.
People’s Law Office attorneys G. Flint Taylor, Jeffrey Haas, John Stainthorp, Joey Mogul, Tim Lohraff, Ben Elson, Sarah Gelsomino, Michael Deutsch, Jan Susler, Erica Thompson and Shubra Ohri have represented victims of torture.
It is believed that Burge or those under his command tortured as many as 120 victims from 1972 to 1991, in many cases employing extreme measures — such as suffocating, burning and electroshock — in order to extract confessions from primarily Black, male victims. These documents are not comprehensive; many cases are still being adjudicated in the courts or through the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission.
As of this writing in early 2021, it must be acknowledged that justice for many victims of police torture may never be achieved through the courts or recognized through reparations.
This timeline of key events is based primarily on the Chicago Tribune, “The Chicago Police Torture Scandal: A Legal and Political History” by G. Flint Taylor, and “The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago” by G. Flint Taylor.
1970
March 1, 1970: Vietnam War veteran Jon Burge joins the Chicago Police Department.
1977
1977: Officer Jon Burge is promoted to sergeant.
1981
1981: Jon Burge is promoted to lieutenant. A new Violent Crimes Unit run out of the police station known as Area 2 is formed with Burge as the supervisor.
1982
February 9, 1982: Chicago police officers William Fahey and Richard O’Brien are robbed and killed. A large manhunt to find the killers ensues, during which police kick down doors and terrorize many in the Black community. Operation PUSH’s Jesse Jackson and Renault Robinson of the Afro American Police League condemn the tactics as “martial law” that “smack of Nazi Germany.”
February 14, 1982: Warrants are issued for Andrew Wilson and his younger brother, Jackie F. Wilson, in the fatal shooting of Officers Fahey and O’Brien.
February 17, 1982: Dr. John Raba, medical director at the Cook County Jail, delivers a letter to Chicago Police Superintendent Richard J. Brzeczek detailing the wounds he saw on Andrew Wilson’s body and reporting his story of torture at the hands of officers at Area 2. Wilson brings the letter to then-State’s Attorney of Cook County Richard M. Daley. Daley declines to investigate the allegations.
September 1982: Stanley Wrice is beaten by Peter Dignan and John Byrne, two officers under Burge’s command. He gives a false confession, he says, to a rape charge.
1983
October 28, 1983: Gregory Banks and David Bates are arrested for the murder of a drug dealer and brought to Area 2 for questioning. Detectives Peter Dignan and Charles Grunhard take over questioning. Banks later testifies that Dignan tells him “we’ve got something for niggers” before placing a plastic bag over his head and suffocating him. Bates describes a similar experience.
November 2, 1983: Darrell Cannon, a murder suspect in a gang-affiliated killing, is arrested and tortured. He tells police that he was “along for the ride” and helped dump a body but did not commit the crime. Cannon later testifies that he was repeatedly shocked in the genitals with a cattle prod before confessing to the crime. Sgt. John Byrne and Detectives Dignan and Grunhard participated, Cannon says. The three all work with police Cmdr. Jon Burge.
1984
June 20, 1984: Darrell Cannon is convicted of murder after a judge does not allow jurors to consider evidence of torture that led to his confession. He is given a life sentence.
1985
1985: Leroy Orange is convicted of stabbing two people. Orange says his confession was extracted by Area 2 police through beating and electroshock and that he had left the victims alive and well the night of the alleged crime. Officers at Area 2 deny the charges at trial, and Judge Arthur J. Cieslik sentences Orange to death.
September 9, 1985: Gregory Banks is convicted and sentenced by Judge Robert L. Sklodowski to 50 years for first-degree murder and armed robbery.
1986
1986: Andrew Wilson files a pro se complaint (i.e., on his own behalf) in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleging that he was tortured by Jon Burge and several of his detectives.
1987
February 18, 1987: Madison Hobley is charged with setting a fire that left seven people dead on East 82nd Street in Chicago. He accuses police of beating him and suffocating him with a plastic typewriter cover. A court later rules that Hobley cannot not prove his injuries, and a jury sentences him to death.
April 15, 1987: Stanley Howard is convicted of shooting and killing Oliver Ridgell, a man involved with a woman with whom he was having an affair. However, the case hinges on a confession from Howard, which he says was coerced after hours of beating and torture. Howard says Area 2 detectives James Lotito and Ronald Boffo beat him and suffocated him until he lost consciousness.
1988
May 2, 1988: The People’s Law Office agrees to represent Andrew Wilson in his civil rights suit alleging torture by Chicago police. Lawyers for the city move for the case to be dismissed, but Judge Brian Barnett Duff declines, and the case moves toward trial.
August 1988: Jon Burge, now having moved to the police station known as Area 3, arrests Marvin Reeves and Ronald Kitchen for an alleged quintuple murder. Kitchen says he is beaten with a phone book and telephone receiver. Both are convicted, with Kitchen receiving the death penalty and Reeves a life sentence.
1989
December 28, 1989: Gregory Banks’ conviction is overturned by the Illinois Appellate Court, which says evidence of Banks’ confession should have been taken into consideration in his original trial. Co-defendant David Bates’ case is distinguished by lack of physical evidence that he was beaten, and his case continues to be appealed through the courts.
February 14, 1989: Andrew Wilson’s civil rights case goes to trial, exposing beating and torture that one Chicago police officer, Doris M. Byrd, would call an “open secret” at Area 2. However, Judge Brian Barnett Duff, according to Wilson attorney Flint Taylor, allows the city’s lawyers “to present weeks of highly prejudicial and irrelevant evidence about the police murders for which Wilson stood convicted.”
March 13, 1989: Jon Burge takes the stand in the civil rights trial brought by Andrew Wilson, convicted of murder in the cop killings. He denies all allegations of brutality.
March 30, 1989: In Andrew Wilson’s first civil trial seeking damages against city of Chicago officials he hopes to hold responsible for his torture, the eight-week trial results in a hung jury, and a mistrial is declared.
1989: Aaron Patterson, 25, and Eric Caine, 24, are tried and convicted for the stabbing murder of an elderly couple on the South Side of Chicago. Patterson later tells prosecutors that detectives under Cmdr. Burge’s command — including Detectives James Pienta, William Marley, and likely others — interrogated, beat and tortured him over 25 hours at Area 2 before he confessed. Caine also alleges being beaten before confessing. Patterson receives a death sentence, and Caine is sentenced to life for the murders.
February-June 1989: A source dubbed “Deep Badge” writes anonymously to People’s Law Office lawyers with information that leads them to other victims of police torture. One torture victim, Melvin Jones, is particularly helpful to Andrew Wilson’s civil case against Chicago officials. Jones tells the PLO that he was tortured by electroshock just days before Wilson’s torture occurred. The anonymous letters are postmarked February 2, 1989; March 6, 1989; March 15, 1989; and June 16, 1989.
Summer 1989: Judge Duff declines to allow the testimony of Jones in the Andrew Wilson case. Burge is re-called for depositions with Taylor, in which the attorney seeks to question him about his “black box” used for electroshock. Burge tells Taylor he is “very surprised” by the allegation of torture.
Summer 1989: An all-white jury absolves Burge of violating Andrew Wilson’s constitutional rights. However, the jury states that Chicago has a policy of abusing suspects accused of killing police officers. The jury awards no damages.
1990
January 25, 1990: John Conroy publishes his first story in the Chicago Reader about police torture, “House of Screams.” The story asks, “Torture by Electroshock: Could it happen in a Chicago police station? Did it happen at Area 2?”
March 1990: Police oversight body the Office of Professional Standards opens an investigation into police torture. The OPS’s chief administrator, David Fogel, is prompted to do so by Conroy’s article on possible torture at Area 2, according to the Reader.
September 26, 1990: The Office of Professional Standards recommends the firing of three officers involved in the Andrew Wilson case: Jon Burge, Detective John Yucaitis and Detective Patrick O’Hara. The recommendation moves to the Chicago Police Board for a final decision.
October 31, 1990: Chicago prosecutors drop charges against Gregory Banks, citing a lack of evidence.
December 24, 1990: The Chicago City Council holds a hearing on why the People’s Law Office believes the word “torture” better describes the abuses by the Burge detectives than “police brutality.” International torture expert Robert Kirschner, County Commissioner Danny Davis, and one of Andrew Wilson’s lawyers present evidence. Amnesty International calls for an investigation of the Illinois Attorney General’s Office.
1991
September 1991: Eleven juveniles are rounded up for questioning about a recent murder. Many are brought to Area 3 — where Jon Burge had recently been transferred — and beaten as a part of their interrogations. Marcus Wiggins, then just 13 years old and a person with a developmental disability, claims he was beaten and electroshocked. Eight young men are charged with the murder of Alfredo Hernandez, including Jesse Clemon, the only adult charged.
September 25, 1991: Clemon has his statement of guilt in the murder of Hernandez suppressed by Judge Earl Straythorn during his murder trial. Clemon had claimed he was beaten and electroshocked. Straythorn is the first judge to indirectly acknowledge beatings by Burge or his underlings may have led to coerced confessions used in court to convict them.
October 10, 1991: Gregory Banks, whose murder conviction had been overturned because police had beat and coerced a confession out of him, files a lawsuit against detectives involved.
October 11, 1991: An Office of Professional Standards report finds “systemic” and “methodical” abuse and “planned torture” at Area 2. Chicago Police Superintendent LeRoy Martin refuses to make the report public.
November 8, 1991: Police Superintendent Martin suspends and recommends firing Burge after reviewing the OPS report. His recommendation is forwarded to the Chicago Police Board.
1992
December 4, 1992: Aaron Patterson and Eric Caine’s murder convictions are upheld by the Illinois Supreme Court. The court says that allegations of beatings were inconsistent and conflicted with other statements that Patterson had been allowed food and coffee and to make phone calls during his interrogation. “Finally, there was ample consistent testimony that the defendant was not abused or coerced, nor did he request an attorney or his father,” the court writes.
February 1992: The People’s Law Office successfully sues for the release of the OPS report that found “systemic” abuse of suspects at Area 2. The report’s release receives local, national and international press coverage.
February 10, 1992: The Chicago Police Board calls Andrew Wilson and three officers — Jon Burge, John Yucaitis and Detective Patrick O’Hara — to testify, as it weighs firing them. The officers deny allegations of abuse.
1993
January 13, 1993: Lawyers bring a civil rights lawsuit against Burge detectives and the city of Chicago on behalf of Marcus Wiggins. Importantly, the attorneys also push for previously confidential internal police reports that show patterns of Jon Burge’s torture.
February 11, 1993: The Chicago Police Board fires Burge, finding that he had abused Andrew Wilson. The other officers involved, John Yucaitis and Patrick O’Hara, are suspended for 15 months.
October 4, 1993: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reverses the decision of Judge Brian Barnett Duff and the trial court in the trial of Andrew Wilson, saying that the testimony that would have come from another Burge accuser, Melvin Jones, is “plainly relevant,” and orders a new trial.
1994
February 22, 1994: An Illinois appeals court upholds a judge’s decision to disallow prosecutors from using the confession of Jesse Clemon, which the judge affirmed had been coerced. Clemon is set free.
March 31, 1994: The conviction of Madison Hobley, who had been accused of setting a fire that killed seven people and sentenced to death, is affirmed by the Illinois Supreme Court.
October 27, 1994: An Illinois appeals court orders a new trial for David Bates, who had testfied that he was tortured after his arrest along with Gregory Banks for the murder of a drug dealer.
1995
December 1995: Prosecutors have no convincing evidence to present in the new trial of David Bates, and the judge dismisses the case, 12 years after Bates was first arrested along with Gregory Banks. Banks’ case had been dismissed in 1990; the two cases were distinguished because Bates, unlike his co-defendant, could not present physical evidence of torture. Bates soon settles a civil lawsuit with the city for $66,000.
1996
January 11, 1996: John Conroy publishes “Town Without Pity: Police torture: The courts know about it, the media know about it, and chances are you know about it. So why aren’t we doing anything about it?” in the Chicago Reader. Conroy describes a culture of apathy after allegations of police torture are made known.
1997
January 9, 1997: John Conroy publishes “The Shocking Truth: After insisting for years that Andrew Wilson was never tortured by police, why is the city now insisting that he was?” in the Chicago Reader. Conroy reports that a U.S. District court judge has awarded a $1 million settlement for the abuse suffered by Wilson, who had killed two police officers.
1999
January 1999: Federal Judge Milton Shadur is the first to acknowledge that Jon Burge and those under his command beat and tortured defendants during interrogations. Andrew Maxwell, in seeking to challenge his murder conviction and death sentence, is granted the right to seek a hearing by Shadur’s ruling. “It is now common knowledge that in the early to mid-1980s Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and many officers working under him regularly engaged in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions,” Shadur writes.
February 2, 1999: Ten Illinois death row inmates and other prisoners seek to prove they were tortured by Burge and the detectives under his command.
June 24, 1999: John Conroy publishes “Poison in the System” in the Chicago Reader. The first sentence reads:
“Next month, in Cook County Circuit Court, Darrell Cannon will take the witness stand and swear that three Chicago police officers pinned him to the backseat of a police car, pulled his pants and undershorts down to his ankles, and then used a cattle prod on his testicles and penis and in his mouth”
November 17, 1999: Reporters Steve Mills and Ken Armstrong of the Chicago Tribune publish “A tortured path to Death Row,” an investigation of the “Death Row 10” and their allegations of torture by Burge and his detectives.
December 2, 1999: John Conroy publishes “Pure Torture” in the Chicago Reader:
“Police Lieutenant Raymond Patterson didn't believe his son Aaron was a gangbanger. He was wrong. Then he didn't believe that police officers had forced Aaron to confess to a double murder. He may have been wrong about that too.”
The story recounts how the father of Aaron Patterson, a retired police officer, came to believe his son that he had been tortured by his former colleagues.
2000
May 25, 2000: John Conroy publishes “This Is a Magic Can,” a story about the arrest and torture of Madison Hobley, a Burge torture survivor, in the Chicago Reader.
August 10, 2000: Illinois Supreme Court justices issue a landmark decision in the cases of six inmates sentenced to death. Justice S. Louis Rathje orders a retrial in Aaron Patterson’s case, paving the way for other allegations of torture to receive new scrutiny. Patterson and Derrick King are granted new hearings to present evidence of torture.
2001
January 19, 2001: Darrell Cannon, who had been convicted of murder, agrees to drop his claim of troture for a reduced prison term that could ensure his freedom within three years.
March 1, 2001: John Conroy of the Chicago Reader publishes “Annals of Police Torture: What Price Freedom?” about Burge victim Darrell Cannon, who was expected to testify against Detective Peter Dignan, Detective Charles Grunhard and Sgt. John Byrne about the beating, electroshock and torture he endured at their hands. Instead, in exchange for pleading guilty to two lesser charges, murder charges against Cannon were dropped. The deal meant the officers would not have to testify as part of the trial. “Thus Cannon achieved the promise of freedom in about two and a half years, and the state kept Dignan and Byrne off the witness stand,” Conroy writes. “It’s hard to say who got the better deal.”
September 26, 2001: Cook County State’s Attorney Richard Devine offers reduced sentences for Derrick King, Stanley Howard, Andrew Maxwell and Aaron Patterson in exchange for dropping their allegations of police torture.
October 11, 2001: John Conroy publishes “A Hell of a Deal” in the Chicago Reader, detailing how state’s attorney Devine had failed to investigate allegations of torture and reporting on calls for the appointment of a special prosecutor.
2002
April 24, 2002: A Cook County judge appoints a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of torture under Jon Burge, some of which are now decades old.
2003
January 10, 2003: Illinois Gov. George Ryan pardons Leroy Orange, Madison Hobley, Aaron Patterson and Stanley Howard. “If I hadn’t reviewed the cases myself, I wouldn’t believe it. ... (W)e have evidence from four men, who did not know each other, all getting beaten and tortured and convicted on the basis of the confessions they allegedly provided. They are perfect examples of what is so terribly broken about our system,” Ryan says in a statement. All but Howard are released — he remains incarcerated on a separate conviction.
May 29, 2003: Hobley, having been pardoned by the governor, files a lawsuit against Jon Burge and others alleging torture.
June 26, 2003: Patterson, having been pardoned by the governor, files a federal lawsuit alleging torture by Burge and his officers.
November 24, 2003: Howard, having been pardoned by the governor, files a federal lawsuit against Burge alleging torture.
2004
January 10, 2004: Leroy Orange, having been pardoned by the governor, files a federal lawsuit against Jon Burge and other detectives alleging torture.
April 14, 2004: The Cook County State’s Attorney Office drops charges against Darrell Cannon after years of litigation. However, Cannon is not released because of a previous parole violation.
August 4, 2004: Burge, living in Florida, is ordered to return to Chicago to give a deposition in a lawsuit filed by pardoned death row inmates Madison Hobley and Aaron Patterson.
2005
February 4, 2005: John Conroy publishes “The Mysterious Third Device” in the Chicago Reader, investigating the description of a device that plugs into a wall and was used by Jon Burge and others in addition to a cattle prod and a hand-cranked device to deliver electroshock torture.
October 15, 2005: Frustrated by the pace of a special attorney’s investigation into allegations of torture, attorneys and representatives of a number of organizations appear before the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States, where survivors and others testify and present evidence of torture.
2006
May 2006: A lawyer for the People’s Law Office argues to the United Nations Committee Against Torture that the Burge cases represent part of a broad pattern of U.S. human rights violations. The committee calls for an investigation.
July 19, 2006: The special prosecutors appointed to investigate Burge-related torture allegations — Edward Egan and Robert Boyle — absolve former state’s attorney Richard M. Daley and Cook County State’s Attorney Richard Devine of wrongdoing. Their report does, however, find evidence of abuse in several prior cases. Chicago Police Superintendent Richard J. Brzeczek was guilty of a “dereliction of duty,” the report found. As for Burge, they find that the “commander of the Violent Crimes Section of Detective Areas 2 and 3” was “guilty (of) abus(ing) persons with impunity,” and that it therefore “necessarily follows that a number of those serving under his command recognized that if their commander could abuse persons with impunity, so could they.”
July 20, 2006: John Conroy publishes “Doe in the Headlights” in the Chicago Reader, a story about how Lawrence Hyman, the state prosecutor who had taken Andrew Wilson’s confession, had tried to derail or at least keep his name out of a special prosecutor’s report on police torture. While Wilson said he was bleeding and battered from torture, Hyman didn’t ask whether he was giving his confession voluntarily. “Asking this question is standard operating procedure,” Conroy writes. “Not asking it is an omission so stunning that 14 criminal defense attorneys I polled--a group with 213 years of criminal practice and more than 950 murder cases among them--had never heard of another instance.”
November 30, 2006: John Conroy publishes “Blind Justices?” in the Chicago Reader. “The prosecutors who sent police torture victims to prison,” he writes, “are now the judges who keep them there.” Conroy describes the conflict of interest at play when a defendant alleging torture comes back to court.
2007
April 24, 2007: Human rights groups and criminal justice advocates release a “shadow report,” after the special prosecutors’ report did not recommend accountability for former state’s attorney Richard M. Daley and other officials who oversaw Burge-era torture cases. The report paves the way for local hearings on the issue, and both the Chicago City Council and Cook County Board of Commissioners recommend further action.
May 10, 2007: John Conroy of the Chicago Reader publishes “Twenty Questions,” in which he poses questions for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley about the torture scandal and about what he knew as the state’s attorney while the torture was occurring.
September 20, 2007: In the wake of City Council hearings about police torture, several city aldermen deliver a letter to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, asking the prosecutor to charge Jon Burge with perjury.
September 26, 2007: U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald announces a federal investigation into reports of police torture.
2007: Darrell Cannon is released after 24 years in prison.
November 29, 2007: John Conroy of the Chicago Reader publishes “The Persistence of Andrew Wilson,” profiling the original Burge torture victim and his contribution to revealing police torture.
December 7, 2007: The city of Chicago settles the lawsuits of Aaron Patterson, Leroy Orange, Stanley Howard and Madison Hobley alleging torture by Burge and his crew for $19.8 million.
2008
January 2008: The Chicago City Council approves a $19.8 million settlement rather than face hearings in a civil lawsuit brought by the four pardoned torture survivors, Leroy Orange, Madison Hobley, Aaron Patterson and Stanley Howard. The settlement is approved after a judge orders Mayor Richard M. Daley to sit for a deposition in the case. As a result, Mayor Daley avoids being forced to testify. During the course of the lawsuit, lawyers from the People’s Law Office had presented testimony of former Chicago police detectives — no longer afraid of reprisal — who spoke of walking in on torture sessions and hearing screams from interrogation rooms.
October 21, 2008: Jon Burge is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice by federal prosecutors.
October 27, 2008: Burge pleads not guilty to federal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
January 9, 2009: David Fauntleroy, having served 25 years in prison, is cleared of a 1983 murder. He had maintained allegations of torture by officers working under Burge.
May 22, 2009: Victor Safforld, who had long maintained that torture had resulted in his two murder convictions in 1990, is granted a new trial. The court finds that Burge had likely beaten him into a confession.
July 7, 2009: Burge victims Ronald Kitchen and Marvin Reeves receive a certificate of innocence, after charges are dropped in their cases as a result of a reinvestigation of their allegations of torture.
August 18, 2009: Mark Clements, convicted of arson in 1981 that killed four people, is set free after 28 years in prison, having accepted a new plea deal. Clements had long maintained his confession had been coerced by police under the command of Burge.
2009: The Illinois legislature creates the Illinois Torture and Relief Commission (TIRC), which has for years, with a small budget and staff, continued to review claims of Burge-era torture.
September 3, 2009: Alton Logan, who had spent 26 years in prison for a murder he proved he didn’t commit, alleges in a lawsuit that Burge suppressed evidence that would have proved he was innocent.
2010
January 14, 2010: Michael Tillman, who had been convicted of rape and murder in 1986, is freed after 23 years in prison, as prosecutors drop charges and agree that his confession was coerced by detectives working under Jon Burge.
May 6, 2010: The federal obstruction of justice and perjury trial of Burge begins.
May 26, 2010: Anthony Holmes, a former gang member who had been convicted of murder, testifies against Burge and tells the court he was electrocuted and suffocated by Burge.
June 16, 2010: Burge displays emotion while telling the court that he never coerced confessions through beatings or torture during six hours of testimony. “‘No, sir, I did not,’ he said repeatedly to the questions of torture,” the Chicago Tribune reports.
June 28, 2010: Burge is convicted of three counts of obstruction of justice and perjury.
July 1, 2010: Ronald Kitchen, convicted in five murder cases in 1988, sues Burge, his detectives and Mayor Richard M. Daley, alleging his confession was extracted by torture. He spent more than 20 years in prison.
2011
January 21, 2011: Jon Burge is sentenced by a federal judge to 4 ½ years in federal prison. U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow says during the hearing, according to the Chicago Tribune, “If others, such as the United States attorney and the (Cook County) state's attorney, had given heed long ago, so much pain could have been avoided.”
February 2011: Michael Tillman, beaten by several detectives under the command of Burge, is granted a certificate of innocence. He served 24 years in prison before his release.
March 16, 2011: Eric Caine, who had been accused with Aaron Patterson of stabbing an elderly couple to death in 1986, is released and later granted a certificate of innocence. He served 22 years in prison before his release.
July 14, 2011: Federal officials begin an investigation into those who worked under Burge and Cook County prosecutors who dealt with his cases.
August 10, 2011: A federal judge rules that former Mayor Richard M. Daley, named in multiple lawsuits, can be sued for his alleged role in the coerced confessions.
2012
February 2, 2012: The Illinois Supreme Court rules that Stanley Wrice, who had been accused of rape, should receive a new trial. The court rejected the state’s arguments that even if torture had occurred it was a “harmless error.”
March 2, 2012: Former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley denies any role in a coerced confession lawsuit claim brought by Michael Tillman, who had confessed to rape and murder.
2013
September 5, 2013: Jon Burge-linked torture victims Marvin Reeves and Ronald Kitchen receive a $12.3 million settlement. The city’s settlements in Burge-related cases hit $85 million, according to the Chicago Tribune.
2014
July 3, 2014: The Illinois Supreme Court rules that Jon Burge can keep his $4,000-per-month pension despite his perjury and obstruction of justice convictions.
November 12, 2014: We Charge Genocide sends a delegation to the United Nation’s Committee Against Torture to urge the committee to condemn the Chicago Police Department. Shubra Ohri of the People’s Law Office asks the committee to support the reparations ordinance in Chicago.
2015
March 25, 2015: David Yellen, dean of the Loyola University Chicago School of Law, conducts an extensive review of Jon Burge-linked cases and finds at least 20 that courts should review for claims of torture and coerced confessions. Yellen tells the Chicago Tribune there are likely dozens more.
May 6, 2015: The Chicago City Council passes a landmark $5.5 million reparations ordinance for victims of police torture at the hands of Burge or those under his command.
August 12, 2015: Shawn Whirl, convicted of murder, is ordered to be set free after an appeals court rules that his confession was coerced by police torture. He served nearly 25 years in prison before his release.
2016
July 29, 2016: A new state law allows the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission to investigate any allegation of coerced confessions in Cook County. Previously, the commission was tasked to investigate only claims of torture that were linked to Jon Burge and his “Midnight Crew.”