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The Illinois Supreme Court denied a request Tuesday to block portions of a report that details the findings of a four-year investigation into allegations of police torture, paving the way for public disclosure of the long-awaited document. One of the two special prosecutors who headed the investigation said copies of the report could be distributed within two weeks. Community activists and attorneys for alleged victims have been demanding access to the report, which was written by the two court-appointed prosecutors who investigated claims that 192 black men were tortured in Chicago police interrogation rooms in the 1970s and 1980s.

"I'm delighted that the final roadblock to disclosure of the report has been removed," said attorney Locke Bowman of the MacArthur Justice Center.

Ralph Meczyk, the attorney on the losing side of the ruling, said "there is nothing to impair the publication of this report." Meczyk had asked the state's high court to exclude information in the report about the involvement of his client--referred to as "John Doe" in court papers--in a grand jury investigation. He characterized the information as "totally irrelevant" to the investigation. "There were certain things concerning John Doe that we didn't think were fair game for publication," Meczyk said. "In our opinion, they just wanted to smear someone."

The special prosecutors were appointed in 2002 by Cook County's chief criminal judge to investigate claims of torture by Area 2 officers under the command of Lt. Jon Burge. Allegations include officers using suffocation techniques, such as placing a typewriter cover over a suspect's head, along with electric shocks, beatings and mock Russian roulette to elicit confessions. Burge was fired after a police board found that a murder suspect was abused while in his custody. The torture allegations have not led to any criminal charges, but the scandal has drawn attention from human rights groups nationwide and numerous civil lawsuits filed by alleged victims.....

Since the first reports of Chicago police torture surfaced a quarter century ago the list has swelled to nearly 200 cases involving dozens of public employees—and still no one has been prosecuted. Now, with the results of a four-year, multimillion dollar investigation due any day, here’s a guide by staff reporter John Conroy to the key figures in the scandal. Some of them may look familiar.

THE SPECIAL PROSECUTOR'S report on the Chicago police torture scandal is expected to be issued shortly, perhaps in a matter of days. Special prosecutor Edward Egan has uncovered 192 victims (there may well be more) claiming to have been abused by Jon Burge and detectives serving under him from the 1970s into the 1990s, scores of them not identified in any published list. The scale of criminality is immense: hundreds of assaults (most victims were subjected to more than one attack), hundreds of acts of misconduct qualifying as felonies. Some detectives, called to testify in various proceedings, may have committed perjury on five or more occasions in a single case.

And knowledge of the abuse traveled up the ranks: Police superintendents were informed of the torture and knew the identities of some of the torturers. State’s attorneys were informed of the torture, and no one was ever prosecuted. Now that the statute of limitations has run on many if not all of these crimes, state prosecution is unlikely, though victims’ attorneys hold out hope that federal charges are possible.

All of the known victims are black. Some were sent to death row on the basis of tortured confessions and perjured testimony by police, and many are still serving long sentences. All of their confessions are suspect.

Most of the accused police officers are white. Many have been promoted or have retired with pensions. Some of the prosecutors informed of the torture are now judges. One serves on the Illinois Appellate Court. And one is the mayor.

The Reader has reported at length on various aspects of this scandal since 1990, when we were the first to disclose that a torture gang had been operating at the south side’s Area Two headquarters. Here, in an attempt to provide some context in advance of the report’s publication, is a breakdown of officers and officials who have some role in the scandal....

[....] RICHARD M. DALEY [currently Mayor of Chicago]
More than 50 men alleged that they were tortured by Burge and his detectives during Daley’s term as Cook County state’s attorney, from 1981 to 1989. He was put on notice several times, most dramatically in the case of Andrew Wilson. Photographs of Wilson’s stitches, burns, and alligator- clip wounds made compelling evidence in court, underlined by Hyman’s failure to ask if Wilson had given his statement voluntarily. Received copy of letter from Dr. John Raba, who as medical director of Cermak Hospital examined Wilson’s injuries, urging police superintendent Richard Brzeczek to investigate. Brzeczek told Daley he had promised to investigate all cases of police brutality but did not want to jeopardize Wilson’s prosecution and asked for guidance. Daley sent no reply. Mayor of Chicago since 1989....

7. Can Do Something About It: PATRICK FITZGERALD
Victims’ lawyers don’t expect the special prosecutor’s report to contain indictments. They speculate that Egan will say that the statute of limitations precludes state charges, and that the prosecutors’ job was made extremely difficult when so many witnesses—police officers, former prosecutors, and perhaps even sitting judges and active prosecutors—took the Fifth rather than testify before the grand jury.

But Egan’s report may provide the pry bar needed to get new trials. It may also lead to federal prosecutions for civil rights violations, violations of the RICO statute, and possibly perjury. The key audience for the report, after an investment of four years and millions of dollars, may be the U.S. attorney, the person who can make a case for prosecutions on the federal level.

Chicago Reader archive of John Conroy's reporting on the police torture scandal.