A day after the release of a historic report on police torture, attorneys for four men who say their confessions were coerced served federal subpoenas on the special prosecutors Thursday, seeking records of Mayor Daley’s testimony.
Attorney Flint Taylor, who represents pardoned Death Row inmate Leroy Orange and convicted murderer Darrell Cannon, said he is pursuing the information as a first step toward naming Daley as a co-defendant in ongoing federal lawsuits against the city, prosecutors and police officers.
Daley was Cook County state’s attorney during much of the period in which police torture took place, special prosecutor Edward Egan found. Egan’s team interviewed Daley, and the report devoted three of its 290 pages to what Daley knew and did not know about the allegations.
Egan’s long-awaited report found that for two decades, former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge and officers under him tortured criminal suspects into making confessions. The allegations have been the subject of lawsuits and led to Burge’s firing in 1993.
In 2003, Gov. George Ryan pardoned Orange and fellow Death Row inmates Madison Hobley, Stanley Howard and Aaron Patterson, citing evidence of torture and coerced confessions by officers under Burge.
Kurt Feuer, an attorney for Howard and Hobley, filed a similar subpoena Thursday and said Daley “ought to be” named as a defendant in their federal lawsuits. But he does not intend to add Daley as an individual defendant in his cases, he said–a decision made early on, in hopes the cases would progress more quickly.
Taylor’s subpoena also focused on information obtained from Cook County State’s Atty. Richard Devine, former Mayor Jane Byrne, former Police Supt. Richard Brzeczek and Cook County Judge William Kunkle. Taylor said he believes the report shows Daley was aware that Brzeczek, then police superintendent, sent him a 1982 letter requesting direction on how to handle torture allegations against Burge and others.
Daley “never before admitted under oath or anywhere he was aware of that letter,” Taylor said. Brzeczek’s letter related to claims that Andrew Wilson, later convicted in the murder of two police officers, was severely beaten, burned and electrocuted while in police custody. The report is oblique, however, in its treatment of what Daley knew of Brzeczek’s letter regarding Wilson.
The report states that Daley “assumes that he was advised of the letter.” Daley also said the letter “was probably discussed with him and Devine,” the report states.
But it asserts that Daley “has no current memory of how the letter was processed.”
A spokeswoman for Daley declined to comment but said the mayor might take questions at an event Friday.
Though Taylor said the report incriminated the mayor, he criticized the report as an attempt to whitewash Daley and Devine’s involvement in the torture scandal.
Taylor dismissed, meanwhile, the report’s finding that there was no evidence Orange was tortured into confessing.
While special prosecutors said they had reason to believe about half the 148 claims of abuse they investigated, they singled out Orange’s allegation as one that was not persuasive. The report also cited suspicions about claims from Hobley, Howard and Patterson.
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READER POWERPOINT
In response to the question: “Does the report on Jon Burge change your opinion of the Chicago Police Department?”
In Chicago, money talks
What’s the difference? It seems to me that as long as you line the right pockets in this city, you can get away with anything. These city officials will never have to answer for what they did to those men, at least not to the full extent they should. Bottom line: If you know the right people, and you grease a few palms, you are virtually untouchable. Sad, but so true.
Nikki Lanie, Park Ridge
