Why, yes, we do torture people in jails here, as well. And if they're lucky, someone finds out about it.
Nine current and former Chicago Police detectives have invoked their Fifth Amendment rights rather than answer questions about police torture for a pending civil lawsuit. The detectives -- including former Area 2 Cmdr. Jon Burge -- cited their right to remain silent and avoid self-incrimination in response to 25 written questions posed by attorneys of freed Death Row inmate Aaron Patterson. Patterson is one of at least six freed inmates who have civil cases pending against the detectives and the City of Chicago, charging he was threatened and tortured into giving a confession. He also accuses the state's attorney's office of covering it up. Patterson's attorney, Flint Taylor, said the detectives were asked about 47 victims of police torture.
Taylor said invoking the Fifth Amendment is significant because the detectives will be stuck with those answers and, unlike in a criminal case, a jury can be instructed to hold their lack of answers against them.
One of the interesting things about this case is that Patterson alleges that the state's attorney's office colluded in covering up the torture. And the Cook County state's attorney at the time of the torture was, I believe, hizzoner the current mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley. (Why, yes, he was; according to the CEOs for Cities bio page, Daley was State's Attorney of Cook County from 1980-1989, when we elected him mayor. According to the 1999 Chicago Reader article, he was arrested on these charges in 1986. Imagine that.)
That issue aside, one really wonders what's left for the city and county to say in their defense. Who is there to defend the officers? The officers themselves can scarcely do much else but take the Fifth or (possibly) lie on the stand (assuming for the sake of argument that the allegations are true); the statute of limitations hasn't run out on all the crimes of which they stand accused. Many of them, but not all of them. As noted in an earlier piece, but for a statutory requirement in the union agreement that forces the city to defend the officers, it might have sued the men itself. Another detective's sister has stated that he admitted the torture to her. (Although this probably is effectively nothing more than hearsay, legally.) I wonder if this essentially turns the case into a walkover for the plaintiffs. What sort of usable defense can the city or the current and former officers mount when their defense is "I ain't talkin'"?
Posted by iain at July 13, 2004 06:18 PM
