by Cycle the Ghost Round

Two days after Jon Burge was found guilty of two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of perjury, I asked a range of policemen who’d served with the former commander or at the same time for their reactions to the verdict. Read the rest of this entry →

Burge defense attorney Marc Martin addresses the press, Dirksen Building, 6.29.10 (photo by John Conroy)

Jon Burge and federal prosecutors were back in court at 9:00 yesterday morning to revisit the terms of the former police commander’s bond.  Until now, that bond consisted of the deed to Burge’s house, which was valued at approximately $250,000.  Read the rest of this entry →

US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald addresses the press after the Burge verdict (photo by John Conroy)

The jury reached a verdict today shortly after 3:00 pm, the second full day of deliberation, finding former police commander Jon Burge guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Burge, in a dark suit, looked somber when the jury entered and showed no reaction to the verdict in the presence of the jurors. After the jury was excused, William Gamboney, one of the commander’s attorneys, walked to the end of the defense table and patted his client on the back, as if to offer comfort. Burge smiled. Read the rest of this entry →

The prosecution built its case on the accounts of five torture victims, and the jury, now deliberating, must confine itself to the evidence and argument presented in the courtroom. The more than 100 other known cases are off limits, as are the 1990 report from the Office of Professional Standards and the 2006 conclusions drawn by the Cook County Special Prosecutor, both of which indicated that Burge and his detectives tortured suspects on a regular basis. Read the rest of this entry →

The first words out of the mouth of prosecutor David Weisman reminded the jurors that this trial is about more than the charges at hand — perjury and obstruction of justice, that it is about the use of electric shock, suffocation, mock executions, and inflicting radiator burns on five victims. The five cases the government chose to present spanned the years 1973 to 1985. The torture didn’t stop during those years, Weisman said, “because this defendant was above the law. It didn’t stop because it happened at Area 2 and he was in charge. It didn’t stop because he lied about what happened then and he is lying now. He never envisioned these four weeks, when his conduct would be exposed in its full brutality.” Read the rest of this entry →

It’s been an interesting battle between two talented trios of lawyers, attorneys who, when the jury is not around, seem perfectly at ease and friendly with each other. Today, they do their final battle.

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A beefy Michael Hartnett, now an executive in the cable television industry, was the star of the courtroom today. Read the rest of this entry →

After former police commander Jon Burge left the stand yesterday, the jury was excused for a break.  While they were gone, defense witness Ricky Shaw entered from a side door and clanked across the room to the witness stand.  Not wanting the jury to know he was fettered and handcuffed, Judge Joan Lefkow had him raise his right hand and take the oath before the panel re-entered.  She then posted a federal marshal in front of him blocking the jury’s view. Read the rest of this entry →

Prosecutor David Weisman resumed his cross-examination of former commander Jon Burge yesterday morning, drilling in on how Burge handled or mishandled his weapon. Earlier in the trial, Burge was accused of putting a revolver to Shadeed Mumin’s head and playing a sort of Russian Roulette, and Andrew Wilson has claimed in previous testimony that Burge put a gun in the cop-killer’s mouth, but under questioning from the defense, Burge has portrayed himself as a responsible handler of his weapons who would never be so stupid as to engage in such reckless behavior. Read the rest of this entry →

Although testimony from five victims has been presented in the government’s case against former police commander Jon Burge, Andrew Wilson’s stands most prominently among them. Wilson, who died in 2007, murdered two Chicago police officers on February 9, 1982, and contends he was given electric shock, suffocated, and burned against a radiator at Area 2 after his arrest five days later.

Wilson’s case is the only one of the five in which the victim’s injuries were photographed. The photos are dramatic, depicting lacerations on his head and face, a huge burn on his thigh, linear marks on his chest that he testified were the results of being forced against a hot radiator, and patterned abrasions on his ears and nose that seem to support his story that alligator clips were put there by the commander in order to administer electric shock.

The Burge defense team’s job is to convince the jury that those injuries either occurred before Wilson was arrested or after he was taken from Area 2. Read the rest of this entry →