August 29 ILLINOIS: >From death row to freedom -- Inmate N72890 Randy Steidl walked out of the Danville Correctional Center a free man May 28 after spending 17 years in prison, 12 of them on death row, for a gruesome double murder that left a newlywed Paris, Ill., couple dead and their families grieving. On the day of his release, Steidl was restless. He was up at 2 a.m., back in bed at 3, then up again at 5 to start his day. He ate breakfast, changed into a white golf shirt and tan pants, and packed his belongings - a television, a radio and a few items of clothing. "I carried it all out in one box. It's not much after 17 years," he said. A female guard stopped him and asked for his ID number. "N72890," he answered. He was led through several doorways and out into the prison lobby, where his friends and family were waiting with open arms and tear-streaked faces. He was given $23.93 to start his new life. Officially, Steidl still is a suspect in the case. The Illinois State Police continue to investigate the 1986 stabbing deaths of Dyke and Karen Rhoads. But Steidl's attorneys, the Northwestern University Center on Wrongful Convictions, his family and others believe he spent 6,305 days in prison he never should have. Paris, population approximately 9,000, is about 10 miles west of the Indiana border and 40 miles south of Danville. It's the kind of place where everyone has either grown up next door to - or gone to school, church or work - with everyone else. People run into each other all the time at the grocery store or church, even when they don't want to. Paris is quiet and clean, almost the prototypical central Illinois community. But it has a dark side, too. On July 5, 1986, newlyweds Dyke and Karen Rhoads had been out on the town for the evening. They were last seen at a local bar just before midnight. At 4:30 a.m., their home was ablaze. As firefighters made their way through, they found the bodies of Dyke and Karen in their bedroom. Firefighters also discovered the sheets were bloodstained and that the 2 likely didn't die in the fire but from what would later be determined to be more than 50 stab wounds. The fire apparently had been set to cover up their murders. Paris was shocked, and no one more so than the couple's families. "I don't think we believed it. We were hesitant to believe that anyone would want to hurt them. As the week went on, we started to realize how true everything was," said Dyke's sister, Andrea Rhoads Trapp. "Who did it? Why? I think about Dyke and Karen every morning when I get up and every night when I go to bed." Police investigating the murders got a variety of tips from people who knew the couple or thought they had seen or heard something odd. They checked out a former boyfriend of Karen's. Friends said she was frightened by things she'd seen at work - guns and money being loaded into the trunk of a car at a business that did not deal with cash, as well as other things that made her suspect something illegal might be going on. Neighbors reported a Peeping Tom in the area, and others said they'd seen a suspicious, light-yellow car with Florida plates cruising town. Karen's boss offered a $25,000 reward. Police also heard that another Paris resident, a ne'er-do-well named Randy Steidl, then 35, had suggested that something shocking was going to happen the next few weeks. Steidl was living in a one-bedroom apartment on Douglas Street, driving a 1977 Buick Special and working constructions jobs when they'd come up. "I was no angel or choirboy by any means," Steidl recalled. "I used to drink quite a bit, been in barroom fights and things like that. I worked hard, and I played hard." Steidl and Herb Whitlock hung out together often that summer, spending a lot of time in the taverns. A few days after the murders, police pulled the 2 men out of one, the Tap Room, to ask what they knew of the crime. Steidl told authorities he didn't know anything; he said a woman had spent the night at his apartment the night the Rhoadses were killed. "A couple hours later, they cut us loose," he said. "There were still people at the bar. The bar was nothing but a rumor mill anyway. So we spent 8 months dealing with 'Steidl and Whitlock' and the repeating of the rumors, and it got bigger and bigger." In September 1986, Steidl was again at the Tap Room when Darrell Herrington asked him to come outside and talk. Steidl said he didn't know why because the 2 didn't know each other well. "He turned around halfway in the middle of the sidewalk and spun me around and pointed his finger at me and said, 'I saw you down there that night. You had blood all over you.' I said, 'What are you talking about? Darrell, you better get the hell away from me.'" Police recorded the confrontation on videotape, Steidl later learned. By that time, Whitlock had quit drinking and Steidl rarely saw him. Steidl knew people were talking around town that the two had been involved in the murders, but police said nothing else to him about it until Feb. 19, 1987. About 9 p.m., someone knocked on the frosted glass door of Steidl's apartment. "Chuck Jones of the Paris Police Department," the officer outside said. "I need to talk to you." Steidl opened the door. Several officers were waiting, guns drawn. "All I could think of was them having come down to the tavern and about the town drunk accusing me of murder and that something was coming to a head real quick. ... It was just the beginning of a torturous ordeal," Steidl said. He later learned that in the months since his July 1986 interview with police, Herrington and Deborah Rienbolt, another regular of the Paris bar scene, had both, on separate occasions, told police they had been at the Rhoadses' house the night of the murders and that Steidl and Whitlock were responsible. Steidl's brother, Rory Steidl, was a trooper with the Illinois State Police. Rory got a call at home that night, telling him his brother had been arrested for murder. He went to the jail. "He said, 'They have something on you. You have to know something,'" Randy Steidl recalled. "I was pleading my case with my own brother." Steidl's mother hired an attorney - John Muller of Charleston - and paid him $15,000 up front. At the initial court hearing, Muller said he wanted the balance of his payment, another $17,000, in full. "Right then and there, I got a bad feeling," Steidl said. His family paid, and Muller immediately bought a brand-new Buick, the family learned. It was a sign of things to come. In Herrington and Rienbolt, police and prosecutors believed they had two eyewitnesses. Rienbolt said she'd seen Whitlock and Dyke Rhoads arguing over a small drug debt earlier the day of the murders, and she even turned over a knife she claimed was the murder weapon. Prosecutors felt they had eyewitnesses, a motive and opportunity - three key elements for conviction. The trial started a few months later. Each morning, Randy Steidl's attorney would come to court carrying a briefcase. Inside, according to Steidl's family, were the morning newspaper and a pack of cigarettes. The prosecution presented its case, with Herrington and Rienbolt as the star witnesses. They were stars in another case, too. Whitlock also was tried for the murders. On May 22, 1987, a jury found him guilty in Karen's death but not Dyke's. He was sentenced to life in prison, where he remains today. His attorneys continue to appeal his case, arguing that Whitlock was convicted using the same tainted evidence used to convict Steidl. Herrington went to authorities on another matter in September 1986, police said, and, without prompting, told them, "Just don't ask me about the murders." When they did, he said he was passed out in Steidl's car and awoke to hear a woman screaming, went to investigate and saw Steidl covered in blood. Steidl, he said, threatened to kill him if he ever said anything. Rienbolt visited police, also without being asked, in mid-February 1987. She confessed that she'd had a friend forge her signature at her job at a nursing home so she could go out the night of the murders. She said she drank, took some codeine pills and ended up at the Rhoadses, where she provided the knife used to commit the murders and even held Karen down while she was being stabbed. To prove she was there, she mentioned a broken lamp on the floor. Steidl said his attorney never informed him of any of the evidence prosecutors had gathered prior to the trial. Instead, as each witness took the stand, Muller would give him their pretrial statements to read. "I was trying to tug on his sleeve to tell him things were not right. I was telling him the names of people he needed to talk to to show that they were lying," Steidl recalled. "By then, it was too late." No physical evidence was ever presented to link Steidl or Whitlock to the murder scene. And the woman who spent the night of July 5 at Steidl's house testified he was there with her. "It's like you're sitting at home watching television, but you're in the show. It's surreal," Steidl said. It was a long day in July 1987 when Steidl sat by himself for nearly 7 hours, waiting to see what the jurors would decide. He entered the courtroom. It was silent. The verdict forms went from the jurors' hands to the bailiff's and on to the judge's. Guilty. "You just feel like someone just closed the door on your life," Steidl said. "The best way I can explain it: You're sitting there on hot coals, but you can't yell out. Everyone's looking at you. First thing, I looked back at my family and saw how bad it hurt my mother. The anger part comes back. I just shut down on my attorney except to ask how long an appeal would take." The next day, the death penalty portion of the case began - much to Muller's surprise, he later told investigators. He thought he would have a week or two between the trial and the time the jury would decide whether to put Steidl to death. But that's not the way it works in death penalty cases in Illinois. The death penalty decision takes place immediately after the trial. The next day, sheriff's deputies brought Steidl to the courthouse in handcuffs. The judge, Muller, Edgar County State's Attorney Mike McFatridge and Steidl, who had been uncuffed, sat at a card table in the judge's office to discuss the instructions the jury would get to determine whether Steidl was eligible for the death penalty. The hearing took about five minutes. As they stood to leave, Steidl looked at McFatridge and punched him. "I just did it. I didn't really remember hitting him until later," he said. "I'd like to think it's a sure sign of my innocence, but I'm sure you could find 100 prosecutors who would say, 'See, I told you he was bad.' And that's exactly what he said to the jury." Into the courtroom they filed so McFatridge could present to the jury the reasons Steidl should be executed. Normally, the defense would present witnesses such as friends or family to attest to the kind of person the defendant is, present medical records or other reasons his life should be spared. Muller offered nothing, court records indicate. The proceedings were over in an hour. "I joked for years that there were guys on death row who got there for free. It cost me $32,000," Steidl said. "Anybody who says prison isn't a very frightening experience would either be lying or a fool," Steidl said as he remembered being booked into death row at the Pontiac Correctional Center. "It was quite an experience those first few weeks knowing when they shut that door that you're in a cage 23 hours a day, and when you wake up, you know the state wants to kill you and there's nothing you can do about it." The cage was an 8-by-4-foot cell that housed him and another prisoner. For one hour daily, they were allowed out to shower and to go to the yard. Noise was constant. He'd watch television 14 or 15 hours a day or read a book. There was no privacy. He remembers, too well, asking God not to let him wake up the next morning. "Then you get up and there's those bars again," he said. Steidl saw the worst of human nature: lots of extortion, guys who couldn't read or write taken advantage of, discrimination of every race. "Back then, there was so much stress, hostility, anger and rage among everyone that it was a very violent and dangerous place," he said. "It was gladiator school for real." There was one thing that everyone had in common; no one discussed their case. "Guys would look at you and say, 'I didn't do it.' I'd say, 'OK. I know how you feel. I didn't do it either. Nobody cares.' That's the problem." On March 30, 1989, Steidl wasn't worrying about being put to death by the state. He was sure he was going to die another way. About 2 p.m., he was taking a nap when he awoke to the smell of smoke that was thick, black and acrid. He put a wet towel over his face and got down on the floor. Two inmates had set some Styrofoam on fire. "Everything got real quiet and very dark. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face," he recalled. "I heard cells being opened, but I didn't know where or who was doing it. I was taking very short breaths because at this point I only felt I had two or three minutes to live." When he made it outside, he collapsed. The next thing he remembers is being given oxygen by a medical technician. After 6 years at Pontiac, Steidl was moved to Menard in southern Illinois along the Mississippi River. The Flood of 1993 had swallowed the death row cell house, making the roach and rodent problems worse than ever. "There was still mud caked on my bunk. At night, here come the roaches. Wake up at night and a roach was running across my face or the back of my neck. I slept with toilet paper shoved in my ears so I wouldn't have any go in. After the roaches subsided somewhat, a wave of mice came in." There was also a pecking order, with four gangs in charge. A few inmates, including Steidl, didn't join any of them. Generally, they were left alone. But there was one occasion, he said, where not going along almost cost him his life. In May 1994, the gang-bangers on death row staged a protest by refusing to shower, eat or go to the yard - all because John Wayne Gacy was being put to death involuntarily. Steidl went about his normal routine. "I said, 'Look, I don't care if they execute John Wayne Gacy 33 times. Anyone who did what he did, I didn't care about. So I went to the yard. I ate. I showered. I did all the things they weren't, and it was more or less an affront to them." On May 17, they sent a couple of their members to the yard when Steidl went out for exercise. They'd fashioned knives out of razors on toothbrushes. The first cut was to his neck. Then they pushed him up to the fence and jabbed him on the left side. After what seemed like forever, he said, Steidl heard the guards' gunshots. The other inmates backed off. He'd been stabbed seven times. The wounds took 36 stitches to close. In the meantime, Steidl's case went through various appeals, getting shot down each time. In 1997, though, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that Steidl should get a second sentencing hearing because he was inadequately represented at the first one. This time, prosecutors decided not to pursue the death penalty, and in 1999, Steidl was released into the regular prison population and sent to Stateville prison in Joliet. There, things were much different. There was more freedom, and he was able to work his way into getting a prison job to earn some money. Eventually, Steidl was sent to the Danville Correctional Center, a lot closer to home in Edgar County. All the while in prison, he sat and waited, watched appeals in frustration and hoped that one day, people would realize he was innocent. In 1991, the case was assigned to Michael Metnick of Springfield through the Capital Resource Center. He and his investigator, Bill Clutter, worked on it for years, as did other Springfield attorneys: Kathy Saltmarsh, John Hanlon and Peter Rotskoff. The private investigation of his case intensified and with each new discovery, Steidl's case grew stronger and began to attract wider notice. The Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University and the school's investigative journalism students took on his case as did Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn and the CBS television program "48 Hours," among others. Through those investigations, the original case appeared to develop holes. In November 1988, more than a year after Steidl was convicted, Darrell Herrington recanted his testimony. When Herrington initially went to police, private investigators learned, officers were suspicious of his story and state police even gave him a lie detector test to see if he was telling the truth. He failed. In his 1st statement, he'd told police that the perpetrators were "Jim" and "Ed." It was only after Deborah Rienbolt came forward in February 1987, 8 months after the double slaying, that police decided Herrington was a viable witness. When Rienbolt came forward, investigators discovered, she gave police three separate descriptions of events that night. At first, she told police that Whitlock told her he was going to get his "dream girl," Karen Rhoads. By the third statement, she told police that the murders were over a drug debt Dyke Rhoads owed to Whitlock and that she was actually there and participated in the murders. Shortly before the trial, the prosecution had Rienbolt, an admitted alcoholic and drug addict, check into an alcohol rehabilitation facility. Prosecutor McFatridge used a combination of all her stories in court. She ended up spending about two years in prison for concealment of a homicide, since she claimed to have witnessed the murders. Rienbolt recanted her testimony in January 1989, while still in prison. She continued to change her story over the years. Investigators have since cast doubts upon her whereabouts the night of the murders and all her versions of what happened. Rienbolt told Attorney General Lisa Madigan's investigator that McFatridge held her hand through about 10 mock trials in an attempt to solidify her testimony before the trial. In 2000, the CBS news show "48 Hours" reviewed the case through the eyes of some Northwestern University journalism students who spent months in Paris investigating the crime based on flaws in the timeline. Among their discoveries was that a car with Florida license plates had purchased several containers of fuel at a gas local gas station just prior to the fire at the Rhoads' house and a woman in the neighborhood who had seen two strangers in a car from Florida hanging around near the house before the killings. During the trial, Steidl's attorney, Muller, a father of eight, kept a gun in his motel room because someone in a yellow car with Florida plates had been following him each night and had shone their headlights into his window, he later told investigators. The show cast some serious doubt on the case in the public eye. The Illinois State Police was asked to reinvestigate. Lt. Michale Callahan of District 10 based in Pesotum was asked by then-Gov. George Ryan's chief of staff to do so and did. What he found was apparently very different from the original investigation. After Callahan made his findings known, he was moved out of the investigations division of that district. He has since filed a lawsuit. In court documents filed in that suit, Callahan says there was a meeting with Ryan's chief of staff and high-ranking state police personnel in December 2002. "In that meeting," according to court documents, "Callahan indicated that his investigation had provided him with strong reason to believe that both Steidl and Whitlock were in fact innocent and that they had not participated in the Rhoads' murders. Callahan further advised the high-ranking ISP personnel that there was strong evidence to link another individual to the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Rhoads. This position conflicted with the conclusions of the previous official Illinois State Police investigation." The lawsuit also states that Callahan learned that an Illinois State Police captain was allegedly engaged in unlawful activity by "deliberately impeding a criminal investigation." Callahan's lawsuit asks a court to put him back in his regular duties and to compensate him for any economic loss. Even with those findings, Steidl sat in prison. His biggest break was yet to come. On June 17, 2003, U.S. Judge Michael McCuskey ruled that Randy Steidl should either be released or retried within 120 days based on his own review of the case. In his ruling, McCuskey said that "acquittal was reasonably probable if the jury had heard all of the evidence" and that Steidl's attorney, John Muller, did not properly defend Steidl because he didn't seek out any evidence to prove his innocence. Muller died in the 1990s. "I'm the 1st person to solely examine the record on the ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim," McCuskey said recently of his decision. "Something I think people miss is that I did not rule on whether or not he was guilty. I ruled that he was entitled to a new trial and his release comes about because the prosecution decided not to retry him. I did not release him from prison. In my mind, he was going to be retried." After McCuskey's ruling, the case was turned over to Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office. Madigan assigned investigators who fashioned a "war room" on the case, thoroughly reviewing the evidence. Her office also met with the victims' families. "The case was weak, especially in today's society and today's technology," said Andrea Rhoads Trapp, Dyke's sister. "We met with the attorney general who took the time to come and meet with us face to face. My entire family was impressed because they took that time. We do believe they did a very thorough investigation." In the end, Madigan decided not to appeal McCuskey's decision and the Illinois Appellate Prosecutor's Office said 120 days was not enough time to prepare for trial. "Our action is in no way a declaration of Steidl's innocence," a statement from David Rands of the appellate prosecutor's office read after the final decision was made to release Steidl at the end of May. "We are continuing to investigate this case and the action taken today does not preclude charges against Steidl in the future. There is no statute of limitations on murder and Randy Steidl remains a suspect in this case." Michael Metnick, a Springfield attorney who represents Steidl, said he doesn't believe the appellate prosecutor's office didn't have enough time to put together the case. "That's an absolute misstatement," he said. "They had all the materials in the case for 4 years." Rands said last week he can honestly say that he has only had the case since April and that it was not enough time to prepare the case for trial. Up to that point, attorneys in his office had been reviewing the case for different reasons and had not considered a trial. "It's different than setting up a case to try it." Steidl said he was upset by being characterized as a suspect because he believes prosecutors tried to put a cloud over his head as he walked out the door. "They didn't succeed. I welcome a new trial if that's what they want. I have nothing to hide." I'll get up on their witness stand for another two or three hours, or however long they want me, and answer any questions they have to ask." Rands said last week that Illinois State Police are investigating the case. McFatridge, the prosecutor of the original case, said he believes the original jury reached the correct verdict. "Steidl says he wants to be retried. I hope there is a retrial as do many people in Edgar County. If he wants to be retried, I'd like to see a retrial, too. That's one thing we can agree on," McFatridge said. "There was motive, opportunity and two eye witnesses. I agreed with those two juries' verdicts." Metnick, one of Steidl's attorneys, characterized McFatridge's comments as "the standard prosecutorial line. ... I have great faith and great confidence in the jury system but when the jury is only given a portion of the evidence, the jury is not going to make the correct decision." It took nearly a year after McCuskey's June 2003 ruling for the doors to the prison to actually open. In that time, Steidl waited, anxiously, with little sleep for months wondering when, or if, the day would come. In that time, he married a longtime friend, Patty, dreamed of eating a steak dinner with "a real nice salad" and worried what he would do if he did get out. "Every day feels like a week and every week feels like a month," he said in early May. "After all these years, you'd think I'd be used to doing the time. It's scary in a way to think they could open the door today and say 'get your stuff and get out of here.'" The days passed slowly. On the day of his release, they put him in the same gray holding cell where he'd married Patty nearly nine months earlier. There he sat from 8 a.m. until nearly lunchtime, waiting with 2 documentary filmmakers, a reporter and a photographer and a guard. While he waited for escorts to take him out of the jail that sunny May day, the guard noted he was in 7th grade when Steidl went to prison. "There's a long-standing joke among inmates. When you discuss your case, they'd say: 'Your parole officer hasn't even been born yet,'" Steidl laughed. Prison officials came in and told him his attorneys were there to have some final words with him before he left. He met with them and started to walk out of the holding cell and into the lobby where they met his mother, brother and wife, among others. They said a family prayer, walked out to a crowd of media, gave a few statements and left to have that long-anticipated steak and salad dinner. He was no longer "N72890." Now, he was Randy Steidl. As the family's car drove away from the prison that Friday before Memorial Day, Steidl's brother Rory waved his arm in the air and said, "Let freedom ring!" (source: State Journal-Register) *********************** Torture allegations dog ex-police officer----When Jon Burge was fired and left Chicago for Florida 10 years ago, he left turmoil in his wake. The burly man strode confidently from a Tampa courthouse last week, his lawyer placing a protective hand on his back as he passed the news cameras lying in wait. Curious passers-by stopped and wondered about the guy with the shock of pure white hair smoothed perfectly back. "Who's that?" someone asked. Few know him here, and that's how he likes it. But back in Chicago, Jon Burge is big news. He's known as the police commander who, for 20 years, tortured suspects to make them confess. The accusations are like something out of a wartime prison: electric shock and cattle prods; near suffocation with a typewriter bag; mock executions with a pistol. Four people who confessed to him were released from death row last year; they're suing him. A special prosecutor has been on his tail for 2 years. Fired from the Chicago Police Department, he settled into a waterfront community of brick and stucco houses on Tampa Bay 10 years ago, his police pension intact, a boat out back. He has never been charged with a crime. Now people in Chicago are trying to bring him back, back to where he made a name for himself, as hero, then villain. People back home say Jon Burge needs to be called to account. * * * The book Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People delves into how and why torture takes place among ordinary people. Written by Chicago author John Conroy, the book explores torture in Israel, Northern Ireland and Chicago. Burge gets 4 chapters. The son of a blue-collar phone company worker and a fashion columnist for the Chicago Daily News, Burge flunked out of college and volunteered to go to Vietnam twice, according to Conroy's book. He earned a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry and two army commendations for valor, for pulling wounded men to safety while under fire. Back home, Burge joined the Chicago Police Department at 22, working the poor neighborhoods of the south side. He had a knack for defusing volatile situations; once he plucked a gun from the hands of a woman about to shoot herself in the neck. 20 years later, as commander of the detective division, he "outranked 99 % of the policemen in his city," Conroy's book says, and had picked up 13 commendations and a letter of praise from the Department of Justice. His fall from grace can be traced to Feb. 9, 1982, when two police officers, 34-year-old William Fahey and 33-year-old Richard O'Brien, pulled over a Chevrolet Impala for a traffic stop. * * * 1 of the 2 men in the car stripped Fahey of his weapon and shot him in the head and O'Brien in the chest. The shootings brought to 4 the number of officers fatally shot in Chicago that month. Emotions ran hot. 5 days after the shootings, police brought Andrew Wilson in for questioning. 13 hours later, he confessed. He emerged from the interrogation with severe bruising and cuts on his head, a torn retina, burns on his chest and thighs and U-shaped marks on his body. Officers at the jail refused to accept him for fear they would be blamed. He was convicted and sentenced to death, but the Illinois Supreme Court threw out his confession and ordered a new trial, ruling: "The evidence here shows clearly that when the defendant was arrested at 5:15 a.m. on Feb. 14, he may have received a cut above his right eye but that he had no other injuries. "It is equally clear that when the defendant was taken by police officers to Mercy Hospital sometime after ten o'clock that night he had about 15 separate injuries on his head, chest and leg. The inescapable conclusion is that the defendant suffered his injuries while in police custody that day." Convicted at retrial, Wilson was sentenced to life without parole. He sued the city of Chicago, Burge and other detectives. He testified that Burge and another officer used two electroshock devices on his ears, nose, fingers and groin area. Throughout the torture, he said, he was handcuffed to rings on a wall in front of a radiator that burned him. "It's black and it's round and it had a wire sticking out of it and it had a cord on it," Wilson testified, describing one of the shocking devices. Burge "took it and he ran it up between my legs, my groin area, just ran it up there very gently ... up and down, up and down, you know, right between my legs, up and down like this, real gentle with it, but you can feel it, still feel it. "Then he jabbed me with the thing and it slammed me ... into the grille on the window. Then I fell back down, and I think that's when I started spitting up the blood and stuff. Then he stopped." Police denied using torture. Other prisoners came forward, saying they had suffered similar treatment. A judge ultimately awarded Wilson $1-million. The attention spawned more cases. "It has been for many years an open secret that at the police headquarters where Burge worked, a large number of African-American citizens were detained and subjected to horrific forms of abuse," said Locke Bowman, legal director of the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Chicago and a lawyer for a man who says Burge's detectives abused him. Amnesty International asked for an independent investigation, calling the treatment "a clear violation of international law." An investigator for the police department's professional standards office reviewed 50 complaints of abuse against Burge and his officers - electric shock, beatings, jabs with a cattle prod, pistols jammed in mouths in a mock execution, suffocations - and declared that the abuse was "systematic." As many as 108 men have accused Burge and his detectives of torturing confessions from them. With fundraisers and benefits, thousands of officers supported Burge and his men. In 1993, Burge and his officers, who had been suspended without pay for more than a year, met different fates. The officers were reinstated. Burge was fired. He took his pension and moved south to Florida. He left behind people angry not only with him but with the system that took his job but otherwise let him walk away unpunished. "They protected him. They got him out of town and tried to sweep this issue under the rug and they got away with it," said the Rev. Calvin Morris, executive director of the Community Renewal Society in Chicago, which fought to get the city to look into the charges against Burge. "We're left here with people who may be languishing in jail unfairly plus this is a slap on the wrist, and he's in sunny Florida." Chicago police spokesman David Bayless responded: "I speak for the Chicago Police Department but I can't speak for every single opinion here, but I can say that the city of Chicago Police Department fired him. And that speaks for itself." Why didn't the department pursue charges? Bayless said he would get back with the answer, but he never did. * * * Burge was gone, but the investigations continued. City investigators found evidence of torture. They shelved the cases in 1998, figuring the statute of limitations had run out, the Chicago Tribune reported. Lawsuits were filed. Inmates who called themselves the "Death Row 10" said Burge or his detectives tortured confessions out of them. Their number grew to 13. Illinois began finding fault with its death penalty system. A Northwestern University journalism professor and his students dug up evidence that exonerated some death row inmates, including one who said Burge and his detectives tortured him. In 2000, then-Gov. George Ryan halted executions in Illinois after courts found 13 of the men on the state's death row had been wrongfully convicted. Last year, Ryan pardoned 4 of the death row 10, saying the evidence against them rested solely on confessions generated by torture from Burge and his officers. "The 4 men did not know each other," Ryan said, "all getting beaten and tortured and convicted on the same basis of the confessions that they allegedly provided. They are perfect examples of what is so terribly broken about our system." One of the pardoned men was Leroy Orange, then a 33-year-old self-employed maintenance man and scrap collector who was married with 2 children. His only prior arrest had come 14 years earlier at age 18, for criminal property damage. He was picked up for the murder of 2 women, a man and a 10-year-old in a Chicago apartment. The 4 had been bound and stabbed, the apartment set on fire. Orange confessed after 12 hours of questioning during which he said he was shocked with wires attached to his buttocks, testicles and arms and suffocated with a plastic bag over his head. He spent 19 years in prison before Ryan pardoned him. This year he was arrested on drug charges. "What I see with Leroy is that his life was devastated by the conviction and the amount of time he spent in prison," said Thomas F. Geraghty, Orange's lawyer and a professor at Northwestern University School of Law. "He made this claim since day one and no one listened to us. It's more like he is a victim of the system's failure to acknowledge and curtail the antics of these police officers." Burge's Chicago lawyer, Richard Levy, pointed out that although Ryan pardoned 4 of the death row 10, the Supreme Court of Illinois had upheld their convictions. Levy is paid by the city of Chicago, which must represent Burge in lawsuits. He offered this explanation for why so many have made similar claims: "We believe that these allegations of coercion are false and that these individuals were guilty of their underlying crimes. And there can be many reasons why shared allegations of torture are seen. Obviously, they're represented by the same law firm and many of these people were incarcerated together." * * * For the past decade, Burge has lived on the eastern edge of Tampa Bay in Apollo Beach, the winter spot for manatees attracted to the warm water outflow of Tampa Electric's power plant. Burge's white wood-frame home, which he bought for $154,000 in 1994, has coral shutters, a well-manicured yard and a 22-foot motorboat on a canal. His next-door neighbor, 55-year-old retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jack Stevens, said Burge has watched Stevens' home when he's been on vacation and helped him install a door, fix a pool pump and put a timer in his pool. He never talks about what happened in Chicago, and Stevens doesn't ask. "I don't know what it is about him being a cop in Chicago, but he's been an excellent neighbor." What happened in Chicago is what everyone up there wants to hear. Burge was in court in Tampa twice this month fighting a subpoena to give a deposition in Chicago. He walked into County Judge Walter R. Heinrich's tiny courtroom and immediately struck up a conversation with the bailiff in the corner. Burge, who is 56, says he is retired except for some security consultant work. He was jovial and amiable but shook his head when a reporter approached. "I can't, my dear," he said. "I would love to, but I can't. They'll tell you why. I just can't." In one of the suits, Burge's lawyers have said he will invoke the Fifth Amendment against incriminating himself. That's because a special prosecutor is investigating. He was appointed in 2002, after the Cook County Bar Association, the Justice Coalition of Chicago and others filed a petition asking for a special prosecutor to review the allegations. Edward Egan, a former judge from the Illinois Appellate Court and semiretired lawyer, was at his retirement home in Venice, Fla., when he got the call from Illinois asking if he would investigate. Egan and an assistant put together an entire law office to handle the investigation. They hired more lawyers and a company of retired FBI officers to do legwork on allegations dating to 1973. Now 81, Egan said he told his wife the case would take a year. It's taken 2 years and 4 months, and he's not done. He comes home to Venice for holidays and their anniversary. "I've stopped prognosticating," he said. "It's slower than we anticipated. There were a lot of big problems about getting records and finding people. And many died and many people moved out of state." Burge has been subpoenaed to give depositions Wednesday in 2 suits filed by former death row inmates. "I know there's a strong sense that justice has not been done," said Jane Bohman, executive director of the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "That's why the civil suits were filed. Because the truth was never acknowledged by our government. "He's got a pension. He moved to Florida. He probably wanted to go softly into the night, as they say." Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report, which includes information from the Chicago Tribune and "Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People" by John Conroy. (source: St. Petersburg Times) FLORIDA: Jurors, heed this advice Some decent Floridians who were only doing their civic duty awoke recently to the sickening news that, thanks to them, an innocent man had spent 22 years in prison. The rape victim on whose testimony those jurors relied surely feels just as badly about it, if not more so. I wish I could tell you that the people responsible for Florida's criminal justice system were equally chagrined by what happened to Wilton Dedge, 42, who spent more than half his life in prison before DNA evidence exonerated him. But the silence from public officials, apart from a very few, speaks volumes. So if Florida is ever to stop sending so many innocent people to prison, it will have to be the jurors - that's us, folks - who assume the responsibility. This, then, is a primer for fellow prospective jurors. Clip and save it against the day when the letter comes to call you to the courthouse. Rule 1: Don't bet the defendant's life or liberty on eyewitness identification. The mind plays cruel tricks. That 2 or more eyewitnesses agree doesn't necessarily make them right. A University of Michigan review of 328 exonerated prisoners nationwide, published last year, found eyewitness error, often by victims, in nearly 2/3 of the cases. Rule 2: Remember that even innocent people can be persuaded to confess. Among the exonerated murder defendants in that study, nearly half the juveniles and 70 % of the mentally retarded or mentally ill had falsely confessed. Rule 3: Never, never, never believe a jailhouse snitch, unless there is a lot of hard evidence to back him up. The Michigan study found that perjury by co-defendants, snitches and other police informants was the leading cause of false murder convictions. One of these was a death row case in Illinois, where a blue-ribbon commission later sounded a special warning about "in-custody informants," the polite term for jailhouse snitches. Florida prosecutors used a snitch, convicted murder conspirator Clarence Zacke, to send Dedge back to prison after he had won a new trial. Because Zacke claimed Dedge not only admitted the rape but threatened the victim, his new sentence was increased from 30 years to life. The DNA evidence that freed Dedge proved Zacke lied. Just because prosecutors want to believe thugs like Zacke doesn't mean jurors need to believe them too. Rule 4: Don't count on DNA to avoid or rectify a horrible mistake. It's commonly found only in rapes and in some murders, where the forensic evidence includes semen, blood, saliva or tissue. False convictions, the Michigan study found, "may well be at least as common for other crimes of violence, especially robbery." Unfortunately, without DNA, they are a lot more difficult to undo. There are psychologists and other experts who specialize in the reasons why victims and other eyewitnesses are often stupendously wrong. Among the most eloquent experts is a nonprofessional, Jennifer Thompson of North Carolina. Her 1st-person story appeared in this newspaper in June 2000. A rape victim herself, like the woman in Dedge's case, she was so sure her attacker was a man named Ronald Cotton that she testified against him in two trials and saw him sent away for life. At the 2nd trial, the defense produced another man, Bobby Poole, who had bragged in prison that he, not Cotton, had done it. "I have never seen him in my life," she said. "I have no idea who he is." 10 years later, after DNA testing became available, the police detective and the prosecutor came to her home. "Ronald Cotton didn't rape you," they said. "It was Bobby Poole." When the Innocence Project told her about Dedge's exoneration, Thompson offered to write to the Florida rape victim, "who I am sure is experiencing pain beyond words." What, I asked, would she say? "I would tell her to figure out a way to forgive herself," Thompson said. "I'm sure her identification was completely without malice . . . with good intentions. Honestly, in her heart of hearts, she thought she was putting away the person who raped her. The sad thing, the really sad thing, it's so easy to do." Thompson was at a press conference in Michigan, regarding another case, when Gary Wells, an Iowa State University psychologist who has been called "the dean of eyewitness research," was explaining how such things happen. "I thought, "Oh my God, that's exactly what happened,'" said Thompson. "It was so clear, what he said about being in a trauma situation, how the mind is not a video recorder, how any type of verbal and nonverbal clues can be very persuasive and how contamination takes place in memory. 6 hours, 6 days or 6 months later, you're put in front of photos and all of a sudden your memory becomes contaminated." >From her verbal description, a police artist had composed a sketch of her attacker. "At that moment," Thompson said, "that drawing became my attacker, which led to a photo, and once I identified a photo, that photo became my attacker, and Ronald Cotton became my rapist." Thompson apologized to Cotton but didn't leave it at that. She worked with him to change North Carolina's law so that exonerated prisoners would be paid $10,000 for each year in prison rather than the $500 a year the state then provided. It's now $20,000 a year. If that does not seem like much, it's $20,000 a year more than Florida pays. Tallahassee is not totally tone-deaf. I discussed the Dedge case with state Sen. Rod Smith, a Gainesville Democrat and a former state attorney whose expertise the Senate values. His former colleagues in the prosecution business need to listen to him too. "Give me a good circumstantial case where I can put lots of physical evidence together and I sleep well at night. Give me an eyewitness case alone, and I'm awfully concerned," he said. "Eyewitness evidence is the least reliable form of evidence under most circumstances." "Eyewitness testimony is the most frightening thing you get as a prosecutor," agrees Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, a former assistant U.S. attorney. But the last word from the Florida Supreme Court on this subject, six years ago, was outrageously wrong. In a 5-2 decision, it held that it is entirely up to the "sound discretion" of the trial judge whether to let a jury hear expert testimony on the fallibility of eyewitnesses. The man who lost that case, which depended largely on eyewitness testimony unsupported by any other evidence, is still serving a 30-year sentence. Justices Harry Anstead and Gerald Kogan dissented. Kogan, now retired, said last week that the Dedge case points up not only the fallibility of eyewitnesses and the unreliability of snitches but also the reasons why prosecutors should not fight, as they did against Dedge, to keep DNA from being analyzed. That's an important point, because Florida law now guarantees DNA testing only for incarcerated prisoners who did not plead guilty or no contest, as even innocent people sometimes do. "The state should never under any circumstances fight DNA testimony . . . but they do," Kogan said. "And they do it for a very good reason, because deep down inside maybe they're worried that they made a mistake. . . . They'll fight it to preserve the conviction because they don't want to admit, God forbid, that they made a mistake." That, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is why it's up to you. (source: Column, Martin Dyckman, St. Petersburg Times) OREGON: Time to rethink death penalty 20 years after voters in Oregon reinstated the death penalty, it is time to take a dispassionate look and conclude that it hasn't done much good. In the general election of 1984, Oregon voters overwhelmingly called for the death penalty to be resumed. 2 initiatives were on the ballot that year. One, calling for capital punishment or mandatory life sentences for aggravated murder, passed by 893,818 to 296,988. A companion measure, exempting the death penalty from the provision in the state constitution against cruel and vindictive punishment, passed by 653,009 to 521,687. One of the main arguments was that once killers were executed, we could be sure that they would never do any more harm. The justification - prevention of additional killings - has not worked out in practice. For one thing, the death penalty does not apply to ordinary 1st-time murder convictions. For another, the judicial system has failed to live up to the intention expressed by the voters. For countless legal and procedural reasons, the system has so far failed to carry out the mandate of 1984. And the pace of murders in Oregon has been roughly the same since the 1970s - 100 or more a year. The rate per 100,000 has declined as the population increased, perhaps because of Measure 11, which put people in prison for violent crimes well short of murder, rather than letting them off on probation. There have been 2 executions since the death penalty went back on the books. In both cases, the condemned men refused to participate in appeals; they wanted to be executed. The system works when murderers want the state to help them end their incarceration. It does not work when the criminals refuse to consent to be put to death, which is most of the time. 29 men were on Oregon's death row as of last spring, some for as long as 16 years. One of those who had been there the longest, since 1988, had just had his conviction overturned for the third time, and his case was sent back to the trial court for another penalty phase. Death penalty cases are more expensive and take longer than other murder cases. Typically the defendant gets 2 expert attorneys appointed for him rather than 1. And there are 2 trials in each case, one to determine guilt, the other to set the penalty. Summing up: Executions have been all but non-existent. Even so, death penalty cases cost more. The existence of the penalty has not deterred murders. Lifelong prison terms have the same result as executions in keeping the public safe. It's not that repeat murderers don't deserve the death penalty. They do. But the existence of the penalty in Oregon is not doing anything except to cause expense and delays. It's time to let it go. We don't even need a constitutional change, which is unlikely anyway. All we need is prosecutors making up their mind to seek true-life sentences instead. (source: Albany Democrat-Herald)
