From your Chicago Tribune:
But lest one think that this report fully exhonorates the Office of the Cook County States Attorney under Richard Daley and Richard Divine, keep in mind that the homicide charges against O.J. Simpson were not proved "beyond a reasonable doubt."Fired Chicago police commander Jon Burge and several officers who served under him tortured criminal suspects in the 1970s and 1980s, but can't be prosecuted because too much time has passed, court-appointed special prosecutors said today.
Concluding a four-year investigation, the prosecutors also said former Chicago Police Supt. Richard Brzeczek was guilty of "dereliction of duty" and acted in bad faith by not acting against Burge and even praising the detectives under his command despite harboring suspicions that the commander had mistreated prisoners.
"There are cases which we believe would justify our seeking indictments for mistreatment of prisoners by Chicago police officers," said the prosecutors, Edward Egan and Robert Boyle. Egan is a former judge and prosecutor while Boyle is a former prosecutor.
They were appointed in 2002 by Chief Criminal Court Judge Paul Biebel to investigate longstanding allegations of torture by Burge and his subordinates, as well as allegations of a coverup in the upper ranks of the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County state's attorney's office when it was run in the 1980s by Richard Daley, now mayor, and his top assistant, Richard Devine, now the state's attorney.
In their report, Egan and Boyle said they could find "no evidence that would support the charge beyond a reasonable doubt of obstruction of justice (or coverup) by any police personnel."
The report's conclusion is available here.
2 comments:
The conclusion states:
"There is insuffucient evidence of wrongdoing by any member of the States Attorney's Office, except one person."
Who is that one person? Has that ever been revealed?
From the special prosecutor’s report: "In our judgment, [former assistant state’s attorney Lawrence Hyman] did not tell the truth when he denied [in testimony] that he had been told by Andrew Wilson that he had been tortured by detectives under the command of Jon Burge. His false testimony stands as corroboration of Andrew Wilson."
via your Chicago Reader
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