The Last 10 Years

Ten years ago, as we completed the foregoing history of our first twenty years, we predicted that we would continue to be involved in the same kind of work that we had previously done; that statement has proved correct. While our emphasis has sometimes shifted, with different types of cases assuming more prominence from time to time, our essential goal has remained the same - providing legal representation to people and movements fighting for progressive social change, discovering police corruption and abuse through litigation and then exposing it publicly, working with political and social movements to fight that abuse, gaining compensation for victims of police and governmental abuse, defending against criminal charges, and working for the rights of prisoners.

There have been some changes in our physical surroundings and the people who make up the office. In 1990 we moved from our downtown offices to our present offices at 1180 N. Milwaukee Avenue. With some of the money from the George Jones verdict, we bought and rehabbed the building, and designed our office space on the third and fourth floors. Several office members joined and left, permanently or temporarily, during the decade. In 1991 Michael left to work on the Attica civil trials, and later became legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, based in New York. Erica, who had worked with the office as a law student for several years, joined as a lawyer in 1991. In 1994, Peter left after more than twenty stalwart years to work with the Public Guardian’s Office, representing abused children in civil actions against the persons and organizations that abused them, Jani took a leave of absence to head up the Public Interest Law Firm at the Syracuse University College of Law Clinical Programs and Ed Koziboski came on as an associate. In the mid-90s Micky Forbes worked as a law student and lawyer until accepting a position as a federal defender. In 1996 Tim Lohraff left the public defender’s office to become a PLO associate, and Joey Mogul, who had worked with the office as a law student, joined the office as an associate in 1997.

The past few years have also seen some changes in our trusted support staff. Our longstanding and trusty administrative assistant and office manager, Jill Inglis, was able to concentrate on the office manager’s job as the secretarial function was expertly assumed by Meryl Geffner in 1990. Leila Hilal provided invaluable assistance as a paralegal in 1992-93 before leaving to attend law school. Abby Clough worked here in several different roles between 1995 and 1998, first as a student intern, then as a paralegal, and eventually as a law student after she went to law school. In 1995, our longstanding and beloved law clerk, Jose Berrios, left to pursue a musical career. After Jose left, he was replaced by Dana Weiss, then by Claudia Arias. Meryl and her family moved to Seattle in 1996, the lawyers became their own typists as the office increased its computerization, and Lourdes Padilla was hired as our receptionist. In 1998 Claudia moved to Miami and she was replaced by Allison Forker. We have been extremely fortunate in having intelligent, highly skilled, cooperative and committed staff and students, and those who served in the 90’s are certainly no exception to that rule. They have helped us immeasurably in effectively continuing our work.

Police Torture and Abuse

In 1988, Flint and John filed a civil rights action against DuPage County prosecutors and sheriff’s police for falsely arresting and maliciously prosecuting Stephen Buckley. Buckley, Rolando Cruz and Alex Hernandez, were innocent men who had been framed for the 1983 murder of 10 year old Jeanine Nicarico. That same year, John, Flint, and Jeff became actively involved in the Andrew Wilson civil rights case. Wilson was beaten, burned and electroshocked by several Area 2 detectives, including the commanding officer of the Violent Crimes Unit, Lt. Jon Burge, after being arrested for killing two police officers. The case went to trial before Federal Judge Brian Duff in 1989. Wilson presented compelling evidence of his own injuries and also showed that the police investigation had been characterized by systematic torture and violence. During the trial, an anonymous police source revealed to us that Burge and a group of fellow detectives under his command had systematically tortured numerous other suspects. The jury hung, the retrial proceeded two months later, and the second jury acquitted Burge, but found the City had a policy and practice of abusing and torturing persons suspected of injuring or killing police officers. Judge Duff, who conducted the trials in a manner all too reminiscent of Judge Perry in Hampton, held Flint, Jeff and John in contempt, refused to admit the newly discovered evidence that Burge had tortured numerous other suspects over a 12 year period, or that he tortured another suspect at police headquarters only days before he tortured Wilson, allowed the trial to focus on Wilson’s conviction for killing the officers, and provided the defendants with additional jury challenges at the second trial, thereby assuring an all white jury. Our continuing investigation of the pattern and practice of torture under Burge’s command made it clear that Burge’s torture interrogations were an open secret within the police department, and the evidence adduced at the trials and in our investigation led to an Amnesty International Report on police torture in Chicago, increased public attention on the issue of police torture, fueled community activism, and led to the police department’s opening of an internal investigation into the allegations of systematic police torture.

Also in 1989, two young African-Americans, Calvin McLin and Joseph Weaver, were picked up by two Chicago police officers, physically abused, and dropped off in the white racist community of Canaryville, where they were terrorized and beaten by racist thugs. At about the same time, an unarmed African-American man, Leonard Bannister, was shot and killed by the Chicago police. Community outrage led to a march through Canaryville, City Council hearings on police brutality, and prosecution of the officers involved in the McLin-Weaver case. The entire office mobilized for the march, and Jeff, Peter, Flint and Erica, together with Stan, who had recently left the office, participated in the council hearings, and brought and litigated suits on behalf of the victims and their families. In these suits, we alleged Monell policy claims for failing to adequately hire, discipline, supervise, monitor, and control problem police officers. We would successfully utilize this claim in numerous subsequent cases throughout the 1990’s to obtain valuable evidence of systemic police misconduct and indifference, and to enhance settlements and verdicts in police abuse cases. The McLin-Weaver and Bannister cases were ultimately settled for an aggregate of $450,000.

Also in 1990, Jan, Jeff and Flint became actively involved in a case which alleged that the CPD’s policies and practices for dealing with domestic violence by its officers were completely inadequate. During discovery in this Monell damages case, we developed a wealth of evidence, much of it from the mouths of high-ranking police officials, which powerfully demonstrated that the CPD had a very serious domestic violence problem and woefully inadequate mechanisms for dealing with it. This case not only obtained a substantial settlement for the abused police spouse, but also compelled the Department to make substantial changes in their domestic violence policies and practices.

Representing Demonstrators

In the early 90’s the Office continued its tradition of representing militant and revolutionary activists and demonstrators, a tradition which originally encompassed the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords Organization, the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, and SDS. Throughout the 1980’s lawyers at PLO had joined with the NLG to provide legal monitors at demonstrations, and joined in the protests against U.S. involvement in Central America, South Africa, and the Middle East. We also represented activists who were arrested for acts of direct action and civil disobedience in criminal court, and activists from many different organizations, including student groups, the Emergency Clinic Defense Coalition (a pro choice direct action group), Homeless on the Move for Equality, Greenpeace, Queer Nation, ADAPT (a disability rights activist group), activists protesting the lack of Latino hiring at the Chicago Transit Authority, and ACORN.

Several activist groups, including the Pledge of Resistance and Queer Nation, faced civil lawsuits for injunctions to curtail their activities. Queer Nation was sued by a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Indiana to enjoin protests concerning homophobic incidents and discriminatory hiring practices. The Pledge and individual members were served with emergency injunctions late in the evening at their homes by process servers hired by attorneys for the Water Tower Place management company. The shopping center sought to prohibit Central America activists from creatively bringing their message to holiday consumers by singing rewritten lyrics to popular carols. Jani defended these lawsuits, and the Illinois Appellate Court upheld the trial judge’s decision to hold the activists in contempt but to issue no penalty.

Misdemeanor charges against activists were often dismissed as the prosecution feared the exposure of our clients’ courageous politics and the heavy-handed conduct of the police who were ostensibly assigned to “serve and protect” the demonstrators. Northwestern University activists against apartheid and CIA recruiting on campus prepared defenses only to have charges dropped on the eve of trial. During the early 1990’s a major antiwar mobilization against the War in the Persian Gulf yielded large numbers of protestors and arrests. In the winter of 1990, the “Chicago 19,” a group of steadfast activists refused to negotiate pleas and demanded trials until their charges were also dropped. PLO attorneys were part of the Legal Committee on the Persian Gulf, coordinating the legal defense of arrested activists and providing legal counsel to conscientious objectors. Erica and Jani were themselves arrested in January of 1991, along with then NLG President Ora Schub and Pasquale Lombardo in the lobby of the federal building gathering signatures for a statement in opposition to the war which was to appear in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin.

PLO’s involvement with activist groups in the 90’s is exemplified by work with the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP CHICAGO). Jani, together with other NLG lawyers and students, attended meetings to discuss legal issues, coordinated legal observers at demonstrations and provided representation in criminal and civil courts. ACT UP activists demonstrated, protested, met with officials and disrupted speeches, including a speech by then President Bush at the Hyatt which resulted in criminal trespass charges being placed against four ACT UP members. ACT UP’s particular brand of uncompromising activism, including direct action and in-your-face tactics, organized many people and brought about tangible results.

On April 23, 1990, ACT UP CHICAGO sponsored the National AIDS Actions for Healthcare, hosting activists from around the country. The downtown Chicago demonstration protested the treatment of people with AIDS, focusing on the discrimination of insurance companies and the inadequate health care system in our country particularly with regards to women and people of color. A letter from the ACT UP Legal Defense Committee articulated the success of the demonstration: “Our city is still ringing: women were allowed on Ward 65 at Cook County Hospital, education is continuing about police brutality and many of our friends have told us the demonstration was the best one they’ve attended since the 60’s.” More than 100 activists were arrested, many from out of state. Jani and Stacey Beckman, a law student working with us, coordinated the legal defense of all those who were arrested on mob action and trespassing charges, negotiating pleas, demanding jury trials and attempting to conduct absentia trials for out of state activists who chose not to return to appear in court.

On June 24, 1991, another large national demonstration took place in Chicago. The demonstration coincided with the annual conference of the American Medical Association being held at the Chicago Hilton. The AMA was targeted in order to oppose its support for “limited” mandatory HIV testing and “contact tracing” of sexual and needle-sharing partners of HIV positive people. ACT UP demanded that the AMA endorse a nationalized healthcare system and embrace “alternative AIDS treatment modalities.” The Chicago police stepped up its harassment and 27 ACT UP members were arrested and brutalized during the protest. Officers removed badges to avoid identification, brutality was captured on video tape, police muttered anti-gay slurs at protestors, photographers were grabbed, thrown to the ground and cameras confiscated as attempts were made to document the homophobic brutality. In an attempt to cover up this misconduct and exploit AIDS hysteria, one young activist was charged with a felony attempt to disarm a police officer and battery; the charging officer falsely claimed that the man bit him. A video taken at the scene challenged the police version of this arrest, showing that the activists were suddenly grabbed and pulled across the police line by an officer, later identified as Rex Hayes, a notorious “repeater beater” who had cost the City millions of dollars due to his prior brutality. Hayes then threw the activist to the ground with his arm behind his back, as other officers punched him, pinned him to the ground and kicked him, causing him to sustain injuries including bruises and contusions requiring stitches. The felony charge was reduced to a misdemeanor, and all remaining charges were subsequently dismissed. Jani, Jan and Flint filed and litigated civil rights complaints on behalf of several of the demonstrators, and the allegations included Monell claims for the failure to properly discipline and control the notorious Rex Hayes and several other repeater officers. The cases were ultimately settled for a total of $80,000 divided among the activists.

Back to the Supreme Court

PLO Lawyers argued two cases before the United States Supreme Court in the early 1990’s. In 1992 John successfully briefed and argued the Soldal case, reversing an en banc decision of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals which held that the seizure of Soldal’s mobile home did not violate the Fourth Amendment because it did not infringe on his privacy rights. In a unanimous decision written by Justice Byron White, the Supreme Court held that the seizure of the home, which White wryly noted gave “new meaning” to the term “mobile home,” did in fact violate the Fourth Amendment because it interfered with Soldal’s property rights. The next year, Flint and John returned again, with Flint successfully arguing the Buckley case. In a decision written by Justice Stevens which narrowed the scope of absolute prosecutorial immunity, the Court held that a prosecutor was not absolutely immune for his actions in holding a defamatory press conference, or for acting as an investigator during the early stages of a prosecution.

The Campaign Against Police Torture

The office continued to investigate other cases of police torture and to furnish this evidence to the Office of Professional Standards investigators who were conducting the police torture investigations. Additionally, we continued to work closely with organizations fighting police torture and activists who were demonstrating at City Council meetings, meeting with the police superintendent, making a film concerning torture in Chicago, and otherwise educating the public. On Christmas eve of 1990, Flint testified before the City Council and presented the evidence of police torture which had been gathered to date, and less than a year later, the OPS completed two reports, one of which (the Sanders Report) recommended the firing of Jon Burge for torturing Andrew Wilson, while the other (the Goldston Report) found that the abuse of suspects at Area 2 from 1973 to 1986 included “psychological techniques and planned torture,” was “systematic,” “methodical,” and that Area 2 command members, particularly Jon Burge, “were aware of the systematic abuse and perpetuated it either by actively participating in same or failing to take any action to bring it to an end.” The Department suspended Burge, then a police Commander, for his torture of Wilson but suppressed the report which found systematic torture and abuse. However, we were able to obtain the report through discovery in another Monell failure to discipline case, and in February of 1992, obtained a court order releasing it to the public. Its release on the eve of Burge’s hearing before the Police Board gained national and international attention. The Burge hearings continued into April, and Flint and Jeff were frequent commentators on the nightly news coverage of the hearings. Later that year, John and Flint argued the appeal of the Wilson case before a conservative panel of the Seventh Circuit, which nonetheless seemed sympathetic to our arguments.

Two significant torture decisions were handed down in early 1993. In February, the Chicago Police Board found that Burge had physically abused Wilson, failed to stop the physical abuse, and failed to provide him medical care and ordered that he be fired. In April, the Seventh Circuit reversed the jury’s verdict in favor of Burge in the civil case, holding that the plaintiff’s case was “strong,” and that the “torrent of inflammatory evidence and argument” which the Judge permitted the jury to hear concerning Wilson, as well as his barring of clearly relevant acts of torture by Burge and his detectives, mandated reversal. However, despite finding that abuse of suspects was “in fact common” under Burge’s command, and that a rational jury could infer that the police superintendent was aware of the abuse, the Court refused to acknowledge that the Department was responsible for Burge’s conduct, and dismissed the City from the case. During this period, Flint, Jeff and John filed several individual cases for other torture victims, including one on behalf of a thirteen year old boy who was tortured under Burge’s command only a month before Burge was suspended. Additionally, Jeff and Erica won a reversal of another torture victim’s conviction, in part on the basis of the findings of systematic torture found in the Goldston Report.

Attica

In September of 1991, twenty years after the massacre, the Attica civil trial began in Buffalo, New York. Two pre-trial immunity appeals had resulted in the dismissal of the Estate of former Governor Nelson Rockefeller, but allowed the Commander of the State Police, John Monahan, the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections, Russell Oswald, the Warden, Vincent Mancusi, and the Assistant Warden, Karl Pfeil, to remain as supervisory defendants. The trial team, consisting of Elizabeth Fink, Michael, Dennis, and Joe Heath, sought to hold these defendants liable to the entire class of Attica prisoners for the murderous attack, the brutal reprisals which followed the retaking of the prison, and the failure to provide medical care. After a grueling four month trial, the jury returned a mixed verdict, holding Pfeil liable to the class for the reprisals, while hanging as to Monahan on the attack claim, and as to Mancusi and Oswald on the reprisal claim. This trial was followed, several years later, by damages trials on behalf of prisoners who were victims of reprisals. Michael, Liz Fink and Danny Meyers tried these cases. Frank “Big Black” Smith was the first case tried. Frank had been tortured after the takeover, and the evidence of his torment was compelling. The record verdict of $4 million reflected the jury’s outrage. In a case of substantially less injury, another class plaintiff received a $50,000 verdict. The State of New York appealed the verdicts, and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently reversed the verdicts, holding that the jury was improperly instructed. While the Court condemned the conduct which was demonstrated by the evidence, opined that the size of the verdicts were not excessive and urged the State to reach a swift and fair settlement in the case, the decision was a substantial setback in the long and arduous history of the case, and retrials now loom as a distinct possibility.

Death Penalty Cases

While we had worked on several significant and politically important death penalty cases during our first 20 years - the Pontiac cases in the early 1980s were one example - in the early 1990s we began to take on cases where the political significance of the case was the death penalty itself. As Illinois sent more and more people to death row, and the reality of the death sentence being carried out became more stark, we decided that fighting death penalty cases was significant and important work, and that it was right to put a substantial portion of our energy there. We were helped in this decision by our former partner, Charles Hoffman. He had left the office but maintained close contact with us in his new position handling death penalty appeals and post conviction petitions with the Appellate Defender’s office.

In the early 1990s the Capital Resource Center was founded to represent death row prisoners in post conviction proceedings. Jani, who began working on a case with Margaret Byrne, and John were some of the first lawyers recruited by the Center. John was assigned the case of Larry Mack, an African American convicted of murdering a bank guard in the course of a bank robbery. Guilt or innocence of the actual crime was not an issue - the bank security cameras had been rolling throughout the hold-up and Larry was clearly visible and identifiable as the robber with the gun, and the prosecution’s center piece at trial had been a photograph of him apparently shooting the guard at point blank range. The case had already been affirmed on appeal, with the Illinois Supreme Court holding that the evidence showed a deliberate execution, and a Batson claim - that the prosecution used their peremptory challenges to remove Black jurors - had been rejected. As John began to research and investigate the case two things became apparent. One was that Larry himself was not a terrible man and that it made no sense for him to have killed the security guard intentionally, and the second was that his attorney at trial had been quite ineffective, failing to object to inaccurate and unreliable testimony and failing to meet with Larry for more than a couple of hours before the trial. Then, as John read through the transcript of the trial another thing became startlingly clear - although Larry was only eligible for the death penalty if he intentionally shot the guard there was no jury finding that he did have that intention, yet this had never been raised as an issue at trial or on appeal. A Post Conviction Petition raising this issue was filed, with the waiver issue being dealt with by alleging that it was ineffective assistance of counsel for trial and appellate counsel not to have raised the issue. Eventually John convinced an initially skeptical trial judge that the argument was correct, and persuaded the Illinois Supreme Court to affirm by a 4-3 vote. Ironically, the Supreme Court held only that it was ineffective of appellate counsel (who had actually done a great job overall) not to raise the issue, not trial counsel, probably because, while the case was pending before them, they had appointed trial counsel to be a circuit court judge. The Mack decision has since been used by several persons sentenced to death, and has helped many get their death sentences reversed. Today, John is still representing Larry in his sentencing hearing and hopes to be able to persuade a jury not to impose the death penalty for a 1979 crime where it is likely that the shooting was unintentional.

In the mid-1990s John took on another death penalty case, that of Nathson Fields. Nathson had been accused of being an El Rukn who had shot two rival gang members in a supposed battle over drug turf. The case against Nathson was not strong - some supposed eyewitnesses who had not made identifications for a year or more after the incident - but at trial Thomas Maloney, a nasty, racist, pro-prosecution judge, had ruled that the witnesses were credible and the Illinois Supreme Court had upheld his rulings. The Post Conviction Petition looked tough, since credibility can rarely be raised in such a petition. After the petition was filed a bombshell burst - Maloney was indicted for official corruption, and one of the cases involved was Fields’. Maloney had extorted a bribe of $10,000 from Nathson’s co-defendant in return for promising to acquit, had actually received the cash, but had then returned the bribe when he, correctly, suspected that he was under surveillance by law enforcement. Eventually Maloney was convicted and is now in prison. It was later revealed that the state had known about the bribe attempt shortly after the conviction and death sentence but hadn’t bothered telling the Illinois Supreme Court or Nathson’s appellate lawyers about it. Amazingly, the state did not acknowledge that trial before a corrupt judge who had taken a bribe from a co-defendant denied Nathson a fair trial, and argued before the Supreme Court that Nathson had no right to a fair trial. Fortunately, the court recognized the weakness of the argument and reversed the convictions and sentence. The case is now awaiting a retrial and John is still representing Nathson.

John’s knowledge of Maloney’s corruption deepened when he became co-counsel representing William Bracy in a federal habeas corpus petition. Bracy had also been tried and sentenced to death before Maloney, at a time when Maloney was actively soliciting bribes. Although no bribes were passed in Bracy’s case the petition claimed that Maloney was prejudiced against defendants who did not bribe them - he treated them very severely in order to conceal his pro-defendant rulings in cases in which he did take bribes, and to recruit more defense attorneys to pay bribes by making it clear that you had to pay to win. Although the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals scoffed at this theory (over an impassioned dissent by Judge Rovner), the United States Supreme Court held that Bracy was entitled to discovery to see if the theory could be backed up. When we did discovery we discovered a previously hidden report from the United States Attorney’s office which concluded that Maloney used precisely this strategy to conceal his corruption and recruit more bribers. The case is now awaiting decision by the district court.

The office’s work exposing torture in the Chicago Police Department also led directly to another death penalty case. Aaron Patterson was tortured by Area II police into assenting to an inculpatory statement, then scratched a recantation which documented his torture onto the bench in his interrogation room only moments later. The detectives who obtained the statement were some of the same detectives who had been involved in so many other cases of torture, and included the notorious Jon Burge, yet this information had never been presented to the trial court. In 1994 Flint and Jan took over the case on post conviction review and they began to build a powerful evidentiary record of the torture history of Burge and the other police involved in Patterson’s interrogation, and demanded an evidentiary hearing. Tim later joined the litigation team, focusing on developing evidence of actual innocence. In December of 1996 the trial judge, John Morrissey, denied them a hearing, and they pursued an appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court. Joined by Joey, the team aggressively pursued the torture question on appeal. In their briefs, and in Flint’s recent oral argument, they sought to educate the Court about torture and its prevalence in this and other countries and to convince the Court to modify its rule that torture victims must demonstrate physical injury in order to obtain relief. We are hopeful that we will obtain a ground breaking decision from the Illinois Supreme Court, which will order a hearing that can be used to show the torture, the false confession, the unjust conviction, and Patterson’s actual innocence. The effort to free Aaron Patterson has been substantially advanced by the work of the Aaron Patterson Defense Committee which has educated the public about the facts of his case as well as 9 other death row prisoners who were tortured by Burge and his detectives and are now known as the Death Row 10.

John has also become involved in two Indiana death penalty cases, one with Joey and one with Michael. One of them involves the usual factors militating in favor of the death penalty - extremely ineffective trial counsel trying the case with little preparation and few resources. Unfortunately, the changes in federal habeas review introduced in 1996 make it all but impossible to obtain relief in federal courts and the ineffectiveness of counsel is increasingly ignored as politicians hurry to execute people to establish that they are tough on crime. The other case, that of Zolo Azania, involves a militant African American man sentenced to death for an alleged bank robbery and murder. This case is still before the Indiana courts and we are hopeful that we can establish that the original prosecution was based upon perjury and corrupt testimony and that we can win a new trial for Zolo.

Our work in opposition to the death penalty is multifaceted and does not depend on the factual innocence of our clients. While there have been many cases of false convictions and innocent people sentenced to death, our position is that the death penalty is in no case justified in this country and that it is used as a general instrument of oppression, as a political stratagem by politicians, and that it targets primarily African Americans, people of color and those without resources. Our experience with the system has highlighted how arbitrary the death penalty is, and how defendants are often sentenced to death primarily because of the incompetence of their lawyers.

The Guillen and Sledd Cases

The office continued to litigate numerous serious police brutality and misconduct cases in the mid nineties. Many of these cases implicated “repeater” officers who had numerous complaints of police brutality and we often joined the City as a defendant for its systemic failure to properly hire, discipline, supervise or discipline these officers. Two of the most significant cases which we litigated during this period were the Sledd and Guillen cases. In Sledd, narcotics detectives raided the wrong house in Hyde Park, broke down the door without knocking and announcing, and burst into the house. Andrew Sledd, an African-American college student, thinking that he and his fiancé were under attack by home invaders, grabbed a .22 rifle, and was shot down by the detectives, leaving him badly wounded and with permanent injury. Jeff, Peter, Flint and Erica filed and litigated the case. After extensive discovery, Judge Charles Norgle, a Judge Perry wannabe, granted summary judgment on the eve of trial; fortunately, we were able to obtain a reversal on appeal and establish that the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity.

In Guillen, the police, while arresting and subduing Jorge Guillen, beat and then asphyxiated him in front of his wife and family. The case received widespread attention, particularly in the Latino community, and the Office of Professional Standards originally sustained allegations against some of the officers. These findings were later overruled by the Superintendent and the Police Board, causing further outrage. Public demonstrations focused on the case, and Mrs. Ilsa Guillen testified before City Council. Jeff and Jan handled the civil rights case and pursued the obvious failures in training and discipline which the case so graphically demonstrated. In 1998, we settled the Sledd case for $687,000 and the Guillen case for $625,000.

Sexual Abuse Litigation

We also continued to pursue cases of sexual abuse by law enforcement officers and others, illegal strip searches, and other violence against women cases. Among the cases, Flint and Erica obtained a settlement for a Nigerian doctor who was strip searched at O’Hare airport, and Jan and Flint obtained a settlement for a women who was illegally strip searched in the police lockup pursuant to an unconstitutional policy and practice. Erica and Flint obtained a settlement for a woman who was strip searched on the street by a “repeater” cop, and Jani, Erica and Jeff obtained a large settlement for a woman who was sexually abused by her priest and psychologist. Flint, Mariel Nanasi, Erica, and Jan brought a case on behalf of a young woman who was picked up on a specious curfew charge by a Chicago police officer who took her to his house and raped her at gunpoint. We also sued the City under Monell, and discovery revealed that the defendant was an obvious problem officer who should never have been hired, and that his prior history with the Department clearly mandated that he be fired well before the rape. After extensive discovery, a mediator awarded our client $625,000. Jeff and Erica obtained a substantial settlement from the City of Waukegan for the family of a woman who was killed by a police informer after the police were informed of his repeated threats against her but took no action. Beginning in 1997, Jan, Jani and Erica filed a series of cases challenging Pontiac Correctional Center’s practice of conducting random strip searches on visitors to the prison. Officials at the prison abandoned the legal requirement that “reasonable suspicion” must exist prior to conducting a strip search and instituted a policy requiring visitors to relinquish their Fourth Amendment rights if they “choose” to visit their incarcerated family members. Thus far, we’ve obtained limited injunctive relief in one case, and the other cases are proceeding to trial.

The 1996 Democratic Convention

In 1996, twenty eight years after the 1968 Democratic National Convention spotlighted the brutality of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s police, the DNC returned to Chicago and placed Mayor Richard M. Daley’s police under scrutiny. Many different progressive groups planned actions, demonstrations and celebrations throughout the convention week. One broad coalition entitled “Not on the Guest List” planned a march from Wicker Park to the convention site at the United Center focusing on issues of political prisoners. Although police personnel reported to the media that the march was peaceful, five individuals who were present at the march were arrested by Chicago police almost 48 hours later and charged with felony mob action and aggravated battery. Jeff coordinated the defense with Tim, and the defense team also included Leonard Weinglass. After a lengthy trial, all five were acquitted of all charges. Jeff, Tim and Jani are currently prosecuting a false arrest and malicious prosecution lawsuit on behalf of the five.

Police Torture Cases (Continued)

In 1994, the Andrew Wilson civil case was remanded to the District Court and was ultimately assigned to a progressive Judge, Robert Gettleman. As was the case in Hampton, the uncovering of damning evidence and intervening political and legal events had turned the tide in the case, and Flint, Jeff and John aggressively pursued judgment against Burge and the City. Relying on the Police Board findings, which ultimately were affirmed by the Illinois Appellate Court, we successfully obtained summary judgment on Burge’s liability. The City then reversed its position, arguing that it was not legally responsible for Burge’s torture of Wilson, and did not have to pay any judgment to Wilson or his lawyers, because he was acting outside the scope of his employment. Judge Gettleman rejected this argument, and entered a judgement against Burge and the City for approximately $1 million in damages and fees. The City appealed, John and Flint prepared the brief, and John argued the case before the Seventh Circuit. In another unequivocal opinion, the Court found that Burge’s torture of Wilson during his interrogation was clearly within the scope of his employment, and affirmed the judgement. After appellate fees were assessed, we collected $1.1 million dollars in judgments and fees for more than ten hard fought years of litigation.

Our policy and practice cases also gave us another avenue to pursue additional torture evidence and to expose the Police Department’s continuing coverup and failure to discipline many of the officers who were implicated with Burge in torturing suspects. In the Wiggins and Santiago cases, Flint was able to obtain the OPS files of the torture investigations which were opened in the early 1990’s in response to the OPS findings of systematic torture and abuse. Additionally, he was able to get Court orders in those cases which permitted the files to be publicly released, and which directed the officials involved, including the Police Superintendent and the OPS Director, to testify about these investigations. This evidence and testimony established that OPS investigators had sustained charges of torture during interrogations, including electroshock and simulated suffocation by baggings, in six cases, including several where the victim was in the penitentiary or on death row because of a tortured confession, and that the officers against whom the cases were sustained included one influential lieutenant who was still on the force. This evidence further showed that the Director of the OPS and the Superintendent’s Office refused to accept these findings, suppressed them for more than four years, then summarily reversed them because they were stale. The recent release of this evidence has occasioned widespread public attention, demands by community groups that these cases be reopened and that more than 30 other torture cases be investigated for the first time, and has aided several death row inmates in their pursuit of evidentiary hearings on their claims of police torture. At the present time, Flint and Tim, together with Thomas Geraghty and Lawrence Marshall, are conducting a motion to suppress hearing in the murder case of Darrell Cannon, at which they are, for the first time, presenting the entire known record of police torture.

The Ford Heights Four and the Ryan Harris Case

In 1996, we became the lawyers for Kenneth Adams, one of the Ford Heights Four, four innocent men who spent a total of 65 years in prison for a crime which the police and prosecutors knew they did not commit. In order to obtain the conviction of these men for murder and rape in 1978, the Cook County Sheriff’s police coerced witnesses to falsely implicate the men, then suppressed evidence which identified who the real killers were. Eighteen years later, all four of the men were still in prison, two on death row, when journalism students who were investigating the case finally uncovered the suppressed evidence and obtained confessions from the real killers. DNA tests further established their innocence, and they were released in 1996. Flint Jeff, John and Joey then filed a civil suit on behalf of Adams, and joined with a star studded cast of lawyers, including Jerry Spence, who represented the other men in their suits to form a formidable litigation team. The team further developed the powerful proof that crucial evidence was coerced, manufactured and suppressed, as well as the compelling damage evidence, particularly the daily horrors which these men suffered while languishing in prison and on death row for a crime which they did not commit. On the basis of this evidence, and buoyed by the gathering strength of anti-death penalty sentiment in cases of innocence, the Ford Heights Four obtained a record $36 million settlement in March of this year.

In 1998, Jan and Flint took up the representation of the seven year old boy who was falsely accused by Chicago police detectives of the murder of an 11 year old girl named Ryan Harris. Knowing that the crime was in all likelihood committed by an adult sex offender, these detectives nonetheless interrogated this seven year old child, together with his eight year old friend, for several hours outside the presence of his family or a youth officer. After this interrogation, the detectives produced “statements” which were completely inconsistent with the known physical evidence, defied all logic and common sense, and were totally bereft of any intent to commit the crime. Nonetheless they charged the boys with murder on the basis of these statements, placed the seven year old in custody in a mental hospital, and forced the boys to sit through an evidentiary hearing at which they were repeatedly accused of being murderers. Subsequently, the belated discovery of semen, public outrage in the African-American community, and DNA tests led to dismissal of the charges against them and the reluctant charging, nearly a year later, of an adult who had a history of sexual attacks. The unspeakable trauma suffered upon these young children by these callous detectives has caused them extreme psychological injury which threatens to be with them for the rest of their lives. The suit alleges that the lead detective has a history of coercing false “confessions” from young children, and further asserts that the coercive interrogations of these children was pursuant to a widespread practice of unconstitutional conduct by detectives which is undeterred by the Department.