Jon Burge.
For those who have followed developments in Illnois, that name is a major part of the decade-long story of Governor Ryan's moratorium, exonerations, reform initiatives, and the Illinois General Assembly's vote earlier this month to repeal the state's death penalty.
But for many outside of Illnois, it would have been easy to miss the name entirely.
"Cop Gets 4½ Years for Lying About Torture," is the Courthouse News Service report.
Former Chicago police Commander Jon Burge was sentenced to 4½ years in prison for lying about the police torture of suspects. Burge denied that officers ever abused suspects in custody, but evidence at a 2003 trial showed that he suffocated suspects with plastic bags, shocked them with electrical devices and put loaded guns to their heads.
Burge, 63, of Apollo Beach, Fla., was convicted in June 2010 of two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of perjury for his false answers in the 2003 civil case.
Burge, a 23-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department, was fired in 1993 over abuse allegations. More than a decade later, special prosecutors were appointed to investigate police torture; the 4-year investigation found that the abuses were outside the statute of limitations.
And:
The police torture led then-Illinois Gov. George Ryan to place a moratorium on the state's death penalty. Ryan pardoned four of Burge's alleged victims.
I want to highlight Alice Kim's thoughts on the sentence. She's the Director of The Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council, where she's produced many programs with Illinois exonerees. She also writes the blog, Dancing the Dialectic.
In a lengthy meditation, she asks, "Was Justice Served?"
I've had Jon Burge on my mind. He was sentenced to four and a half years yesterday for obstructing justice and lying about the torture of more than 100 African American men and women at Area 2 and 3 Police headquarters in the 1970s and 1980s.
This is far less time than the twenty-one long years that Ronald Kitchen spent behind bars (thirteen of those years on death row), wrongfully convicted as the result of a tortured confession that put him and his co-defendant Marvin Reeves away for a crime they did not commit. And it's far less time than the twenty-eight years of hard time served by Mark Clements, who was beaten repeatedly by police officers under Burge's command when he was only sixteen years old.
Jon Burge was responsible for destroying the lives and livelihoods of over 100 African American men and their families. He abused his power and authority as a commanding police officer. And he got away with it for years.
There's much more on her blog -- which is why I've added it to the left-colmn webroll, Diversions.
Earlier coverage from Illinois begins with the post, "Illinois Lt. Gov. Urges Signing Repeal Law."
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