By: Flint Taylor

This article was initially published in InJustice Watch on March 11, 2020.

Just before the City of Chicago, apparently with Mayor Lightfoot’s blessing, took the Stanley Wrice case to trial last month, I wrote that it was still not too late for the city to offer a fair settlement to compensate Wrice for his brutal torture and coerced confession. The mayor stood, I wrote,  “at a legal and political crossroads; the question is whether she will stand with the torturers or torture victims. As lawyers like to say, ‘The jury is still out.’”

Ignoring history, the overwhelming evidence of systemic police torture, her own prior admissions and this warning, ship Lightfoot steamed ahead to trial with the officers represented by a team of five lawyers, four of whom were Andrew Hale and his coterie of private lawyers collecting handsome sums of additional “pinstripe patronage” at the taxpayer’s expense.

This crew, captained by Lightfoot’s handpicked Deputy Corporation Counsel Caryn Jacobs, set out to win the case at all costs, both financial and political, by slandering all six of the witnesses who averred that they had been tortured by Jon Burge henchmen John Byrne and Peter Dignan.

Preening around the courtroom they unabashedly attacked these torture survivors as a pack of liars, and took every opportunity to remind the jury that Wrice had confessed to participating in a brutal rape of a white woman — a charge that Wrice once again steadfastly denied during his testimony.

On the other hand, Dignan and Byrne chose not to sit through the trial, save for their appearance on the witness stand to take the Fifth Amendment when asked about their torture of Wrice and numerous other victims. Instead, their surrogate, Fraternal Order of Police Local 7 vice president Martin Preib, a close personal and political ally of Burge, Dignan, and Byrne, sat as their watchdog throughout the trial. Well before trial Preib had written a letter to Lightfoot on union stationary,  urging her  not to settle the case, claiming that the whole torture scandal was a hoax.

At the conclusion of the eight-day trial, the nine-person jury retired to deliberate late on March 2. Composed of seven women and two men, four of whom were of color, they selected a twenty-three-year old white woman as their foreperson. After approximately five hours of deliberation the following day,  the jury announced its verdict against the officers and for Wrice  on his coerced confession and conspiracy claims, and for the defense on the fabricated evidence claim. The damages award was most telling — $4 million in compensatory damages, and $600,000 apiece against Byrne and Dignan individually. The punitive damages award — extremely high in a police brutality case — spoke volumes about what the jury thought of Byrne and Dignan’s systemic conduct — a condemnation that was made despite the fact that Burge’s name could not be spoken before the jury.

So what does this verdict mean to the taxpayers? Instead of the two to four million that would have been a reasonable eve of trial settlement, (and one that would have been accepted if offered) the city now owes the four million dollars, plus the fees of Wrice attorney Jennifer Bonjean and her team. The City is held responsible for  those compensatory damages and fees, and – though state law forbids  it– has often ended up paying the punitive damages assessed against the officers And, of course, the City also owes the additional fees that Hale and company racked up trying the case.

So, instead of the $2-4 million an eve of trial settlement would have cost, the city now stands to owe more than $8 million in addition to the $2 million already paid in pinstripe patronage. And if the City decides to continue to fight this case the attorneys’ fees meter will continue to run.

Before the trial began a second set of taxpayer financed defense lawyers won a motion separating the case against the city, which rests on whether the torture was part of a pattern and practice, to be decided later. That case appears a slam dunk for Wrice and Bonjean because all they have to show is that the torture of Wrice by Byrne and Dignan was part of a policy and practice of torture that was conducted under the command of Burge — a practice that is now an uncontestable reality that City policymakers, most particularly Lightfoot, Rahm Emanuel, interim Superintendent Beck and the Chicago City Council have admitted, and a raft of federal and state courts have unequivocally affirmed. Lawyers (including the author) will be lining up to question these unquestionably material policymaking witnesses.

So Lightfoot is now not only confronted with a financial dilemma – – -whether to stop the unjustifiable bleeding of taxpayer money – – – but also whether she will now at last intervene to stop her lawyers from chasing the unconscionable agenda of the Fraternal Order of Police and own up to what she preached about Chicago police torture when she was a candidate for office.

The jury has spoken. Will Lightfoot?

By: Flint Taylor

This article was initially published in InJustice Watch on Feb. 14, 2020.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration is poised to embark on defending two of the most notorious of Jon Burge’s midnight crew—former Chicago Police Sergeant John Byrne and Detective Peter Dignan—in a federal lawsuit brought on behalf of 65-year-old Stanley Wrice, whom they are alleged to have tortured and sent to prison for more than three decades.

Barring an unexpected last minute settlement, the trial will open next Thursday in U.S. District Court Judge Harry D. Leinenweber’s courtroom, where Managing Deputy Corporation Counsel Caryn Jacobs and Andrew Hale, a private lawyer who has been paid $1.5 million to date for his work on the case, will try to convince a jury that Byrne and Dignan did not torture Wrice in the bowels of Area 2 Chicago Police Headquarters in 1982.

For 30 years, since the civil rights case of torture victim Andrew Wilson went to trial, the city’s lawyers in past administrations had eschewed efforts to reasonably settle torture claims, making the refusal in Wrice’s case especially striking.

Wrice was picked up with several co-defendants on Sept. 9, 1982, for the alleged rape of a white woman the previous day and taken to Area 2, where they all claimed to have been serially tortured by Byrne and Dignan.

While handcuffed in a cell, Wrice alleges, he was repeatedly beaten with a long metal flashlight and a rubber nightstick—a trademark of the torturers—about the head, arms, legs, and genitals before he gave a confession. Medical evidence fully supports his injuries.

Three of the others picked up with him also say they were beaten with the same rubber nightstick, while one was also subjected to another of Byrne and Dignan’s favorite tactics—simulated suffocation with a plastic bag. Racist taunts allegedly accompanied this wanton brutality and one of the men was threatened with hanging, told — using a pejorative — that other black men had been hung, and threatened to kill him if they ever saw him in a white neighborhood.

Before Judge Leinenweber, Byrne and Dignan no doubt once again will invoke the Fifth Amendment when asked whether they tortured Wrice, his co-defendants, and other African American men known to have been similarly tortured. Their silence can be held against them, as should prior findings of several courts, including the Illinois Supreme Court, and a Cook County special prosecutor, that Byrne and Dignan’s midnight crew was the engine that drove the pattern and practice of police torture at Area 2.

When Wrice was finally exonerated in 2013 after 31 years behind bars, presiding Judge Richard Walsh specifically found that Byrne and Dignan committed perjury at Wrice’s criminal trial when they denied torturing him and his associates.

In the last five years Lori Lightfoot, re-inventing herself as a police reform advocate, has herself made some strong statements about the Burge torture scandal and the police code of silence.

In 2016, the Police Accountability Task Force, which Lightfoot chaired, unequivocally stated “from 1972 to 1991, CPD detective and commander Jon Burge and others he supervised tortured and abused at least 100 African-Americans on the South and West sides in attempts to coerce confessions.”

Wrice and his associates are important members of that group of torture survivors and Byrne and Dignan lead the group of “others he supervised.”

After Burge died in September 2018, then mayoral candidate Lightfoot stated that “with the passing of Jon Burge, we must reflect on the dark legacy that he embodied, so many lives shattered, and a horrible stain on the legitimacy of policing that resonates today.”

And less than a month ago she stood with her interim police superintendent, Charlie Beck, who invoked the “horrific actions” of Burge and his crew as a “tipping point” that “resulted in a huge loss of trust and confidence by the community in their police departments. … even more dramatically, there’s a human cost.”

Nonetheless, in what appears to be a decision that smacks of blatant hypocrisy, Lightfoot’s handpicked lawyers stand ready to defend the indefensible.

Hale, who was sanctioned by former Chief U.S. District Court Judge Ruben Castillo for  misconduct in a previous torture trial, stands to make another million on the Wrice case, in addition to the $1.5 million he has already received.

In all, over the years, the city has paid Hale more than $30 million for defending police misconduct cases, including those against his publicly professed heroes—Burge and his “right hand men,” Byrne and Dignan.

Unlike the torture survivors who have obtained $6 to $10 million dollar settlements from the city, Wrice has not received a certificate of innocence from the Cook County Courts. In the past 15 years, prior administrations have settled those cases where guilt or innocence is not thus resolved, in the $2 million to $4 million range.

That seems fair here. If the case is tried, upwards of $4 million will have been spent defending the indefensible, Wrice and several of his fellow torture survivors will have been revictimized, and Mayor Lightfoot’s strong statements condemning the dark history of police torture will be exposed as a sham, designed to curry political favor.

She stands at a legal and political crossroads; the question is whether she will stands with the torturers or torture victims. As lawyers like to say, “The jury is still out.”

On Friday, January 10, 2020, Cook County Judge Sophia Hall denied the Mayor’s Office bid to withhold over 400 documents concerning the creation of the Joint Public Safety Academy (“Cop Academy”), on Chicago’s West Side. The decision was issued in FOIA litigation brought by Debbie Southorn and Erin Glasco, the plaintiffs and organizers with #NoCopAcademy campaign, filed in the spring of 2018.

Southorn and Glasco previously filed several FOIA requests seeking information regarding Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plans to build the Cop Academy in West Garfield Park, estimated to cost over $95 million, which many believe is wholly unnecessary and will not decrease police violence that destroys the lives of scores of Black and Latinx people in Chicago. The original decision to create the Cop Academy was shrouded in secrecy without any public input as to whether it should be built and where it should be located.

In describing why they brought the lawsuit, Plaintiff Southorn said, “From the outset, Mayor Emanuel engaged in extensive planning and preparation to build this police academy without consulting the residents of the West side or Chicago.  We filed the lawsuit to get all the plans he refused to disclose so that the civilians of Chicago can have all the necessary information to evaluate whether their taxpayer funds should be used to build a police academy or whether their money is better spent on school, mental health and other social services desperately needed on Chicago’s West side.”

The Mayor’s Office argued the documents, including those pertaining to public messaging about the Cop Academy, were protected from disclosure by the “deliberative process privilege.” The People’s Law Office, representing Southorn, Glasco and the #NoCopAcdemy campaign, argued that the bulk of the documents were not protected from disclosure because the materials were generated after Mayor Emanuel made the ultimate decision to build the Cop Academy, and therefore, were not deliberative of his decision to build it. To date, the Mayor’s Office has refused to disclose when Mayor Emanuel decided to build the Cop Academy. 

After months of litigation and several oral arguments, Judge Sophia Hall ruled that Mayor Emanuel was the final decision maker regarding whether to create the Cop Academy and materials withheld by the Office of the Mayor after he made the decision to build the Academy must be disclosed.  Judge Hall’s ruling affirmed #NoCopAcademy’s argument that “the Mayor’s role was to make a decision as to whether to pursue the construction of the JPSTA [Cop Academy].  The Mayor’s Office announcement in the July 3, 2017 Press Release reflected the Mayor’s Office’s decision to build the JPSTA [cop academy].”

This is a win for #NoCopAcademy activists fighting for transparency around how decisions happen in the city of Chicago, and setting the historical record straight.  We look forward to reviewing the newly released documents and continuing to support those who organize for investment in youth and communities, not expanded investments in policing.   Read the decision: here.

Southorn, Glasco and the #NoCopAcademy campaign are represented by Joey Mogul, Ben Elson and Christian Snow of the People’s Law Office.

Yesterday, the Illinois Appellate Court rendered its decision in the Jackie Wilson police torture case. Affirming Cook County Circuit Judge William Hooks’ 119 page decision in which he found that Wilson was tortured into giving a confession, the Court remanded the case for a new trial. In a unanimous decision written by Justice Lavin, the Court recognized that the evidence told  a “morbid tale of improper law enforcement,” and condemned the Special Prosecutors’ who appealed Hooks’ ruling as displaying a “stunning level of denial about the well-established practice of torture in Area 2 and findings of torture by the special prosecutors’ own predecessors.” Wilson was and is represented by Flint Taylor, John Stainthorp and Christian Snow of the People’s Law Office and Elliot Slosar of the University of Chicago’s Exoneration Project.

Read the opinion Here.

On November 21st, People’s Law Office Attorney Michael Deutsch argued in front of the Illinois Appeals Court for the release of his client Ronnie Carrasquillo. Ronnie was sentenced to several hundred years in prison for the 1976 death of a Chicago Police Officer. In Michael’s argument, he highlighted the biased and corrupt Judge Wilson who sentenced Ronnie. Read more about the argument and Ronnie’s case in this recent InjusticeWatch article here.

Also, listen to the Oral Argument here.

Today marks 50 years since the Chicago Police, FBI and Cook County State’s Attorney conspired to murder Fred Hampton and Mark Clark of the Black Panther Party.

This short video honoring Fred is an excerpt from a soon to be released documentary about the 50 year history of our office, directed and produced by Tom Callahan of Sensitive Visuals.*

Our office filed a civil rights lawsuit and fought for over 13 years to expose the role of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program and we succesfully obtained a $1.85 million settlement for family members and survivors of the raid.

The legacy of Fred Hampton lives on and continues to inspire us to fight against racist and politically motivated state violence.

*Archival content courtesy of Freedom Archives.

Video Link Here

Other Links

WBEZ interview with former PLO attorney Jeff Haas

Truthout article published 12.04.2019: 50 Years Ago Today, Police Murdered Fred Hampton. His Activism Lives On.

Yesterday People’s Law Office attorneys Joey Mogul and Christian Snow argued on behalf of the No Cop Academy demanding the City of Chicago release 400 documents related to the $95 million police training academy. Read more about the argument here.