Page 11 - 2018 July Newsletter

SecondVice President’s Report
Torture Commission
Judge’s decision demands accountability
In the wake of a notorious police killer being set free, is it finally time for Chicago’s political leaders to question the legitimacy of a state-funded agency that paved the way for the release of this killer?
The answer is an overwhelming “yes,” for the legal underpinnings of the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Re- lief Commission (TIRC) have been crumbling under renewed scrutiny for more than eight years.
That scrutiny is nowhere to be found in the elected officials who created TIRC. It was also nowhere to be found in the courtroom of the circuit court’s Judge William Hooks, whose rants about the history of police misconduct, particularly the three-decade Burge mythology, were used to justify the deci- sion to overturn the conviction of Jackie Wilson for his role in the
murders of two police officers in 1982.
Freeing Jackie Wilson – twice convicted for his role in the mur-
ders of Officers Richard O’Brien and William Fahey during a traffic stop on the South Side – stands as the most ominous achievement of TIRC since the commission’s inception. It was TIRC that breathed new life into his claims, not a judge, jury or appeals court.
Jackie and his brother Andrew were on their way to the county hospital in February 1982 to free Edgar Hope from police custody when Fahey and O’Brien stopped them. Hope had murdered rookie Chicago Police Officer James E . Doyle several days earlier. Armed with a gun and some hospital uniforms, the brothers were plotting to use disguises to make their way into the hospital and free Hope.
TIRC was originally created in 2009 to investigate claims by in- mates that they were abused by Jon Burge and his men. Later, the scope of TIRC was expanded to include any inmate claiming abuse in Cook County. TIRC has already set in motion the liberation of several inmates, with scores more on the docket.
But Fahey and O’Brien, who had just returned from the rookie officer’s funeral, interrupted the Wilsons’ plot. During the traffic stop, Andrew Wilson was able to gain control of Fahey’s weapon. He shot Fahey, then O’Brien. The brothers took the officers’ weapons and fled in their car.
In his decision to grant bond to Wilson, Judge Hooks said to pros- ecutors, “Man up!” as he chided them about the impact of the Burge cases on the criminal justice system, including more than $160 million in payouts by the city as a consequence of Burge’s alleged wrongs. Hooks also admonished the prosecutors that the criminal justice system is vastly different from the 1980s when Wilson was tried and convicted, intimating that no conviction from that era could be trusted because of the claims about Burge and his men.
Hooks’ diatribe shocked police officers, prosecutors, family members of the victims and anyone familiar with the mountain of evidence that argued Wilson was culpable of the vicious, cowardly crime.
TIRC and judges like Hooks have accepted the historical narra- tive about Burge wholeheartedly. But at the same time, they have failed or refused to acknowledge the growing body of evidence that just as much corruption resides in the industry of accusing police officers. This is a pattern and practice Hooks and TIRC will not ad- dress, but it is evidence nevertheless. A fair justice system requires that if Judge Hooks is going to cite the history against Burge and his
men, he must acknowledge this evidence as well. That is, if he is a judge basing his decisions on the evidence.
`What Hooks refuses to address is the fact that from the very mo- ment TIRC was created in 2009, the foundation of its claims began to erode, and in no small manner. Not only were its philosophical assumptions crumbling, but the commissioners assigned to take up and review the cases were highly suspect, given to alleged bias- es. Many of the commissioners were figures deeply allied with the wrongful conviction movement to begin with and therefore had a powerful inherent conflict of interest when judging police miscon- duct claims.
One commissioner was Rob Warden, former director of the Cen- ter on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University – a man deeply allied with many of the wrongful conviction law firms that take up the cases in which the commission arbitrarily rules that an inmate has a legitimate claim of abuse, even though, like Jackie Wilson, the entire legal apparatus in the state had rejected those claims.
Another commissioner is Craig Futterman, a prolific anti-police activist and lawyer from the University of Chicago Law School. Fut- terman is currently a plaintiff in a lawsuit along with Black Lives Matter, aiming to put the police department in federal oversight.
In Chicago, wrongful conviction lawyers and law firms work hand in hand on their claims and cases. The two main lawyers rep- resenting Wilson, Flint Taylor and Elliot Slosar, work for two differ- ent law firms: Taylor for the People’s Law Office and Slosar for Loevy and Loevy. Both firms have garnered tens of millions of dollars in claims of police misconduct. Then they have their allies like War- den and Futterman also claiming wrongful convictions and serving as commissioners on TIRC.
An absurd conflict.
But even from the first moments that TIRC was formed, the cen- tral players in the wrongful conviction movement began taking fire for misconduct in wrongful conviction cases, and from those first moments of TIRC’s existence, its commissioners signaled they would refuse to let this evidence creep into their investigations, just as Judge Hooks has.
Those cases include allegations of misconduct in the 1982 dou- ble murder by Anthony Porter, the 1987 arson by Madison Hobley that killed seven men, women and children, the rape and murders in the Ford Heights Four case, the murder case in which Anthony McKinney was accused of killing a security guard and the Armando Serrano murder case.
They also include Stanley Wrice – a Burge case – who was exon- erated for a vicious rape and burning of a victim. A judge rejected his certificate of innocence petition, saying he thought Wrice was guilty. Now attorneys defending the so-called Burge detectives are claiming the exoneration is part of a pattern of misconduct cases.
All the victims in these cases were minorities. Some were chil- dren.
These cases, and so many more, undermine the phony narrative upon which TIRC is built. These cases compel elected officials to review the legitimacy of TIRC and they should compel judges like Hooks to get with the times and, most of all, to man up. d
MARTIN PREIB
CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ JULY 2018 11