This much is well-known: Detectives under the direction of Commander Jon Burge used torture–or, in the words of the city of Chicago’s own lawyers, “savage torture”–to get confessions from suspects. The pattern of complaints indicates that the method was first deployed in 1973. The last alleged incident was in 1991. Ninety people are known to have complained of abuse, their charges including electric shock, suffocation, burnings, attacks on the genitals, severe beating, and mock executions. Four of the men on this list were awaiting execution until they were pardoned by Governor George Ryan, who believed they were innocent. The sentences of seven other alleged victims were commuted to life imprisonment when Ryan emptied death row.
The five-day manhunt was directed by Burge, the violent crimes commander in Area Two. It dominated the news. Mayor Jane Byrne offered a $50,000 reward and met with Burge during the investigation. A now retired Area Two detective who took part in the dragnet told the Reader that “there were a million volunteers….Normally you’d have 15 to 20 violent crimes guys on duty. Now you’ve got not only them, you’ve got the property crimes guys, the gang crimes guys. Detectives from Area One were there. The brass was there because it was such a heater case….My partner and I worked 36 hours straight. Burge had to send someone to his house to get clean socks and a shirt. He didn’t go home.”
Nothing seals a guilty verdict tighter than a confession taken by a state’s attorney and a court reporter. According to the detectives, Wilson was ready and willing to make one. Every moment’s delay, however, put that statement at greater risk. Wilson might change his mind; he might decide to ask for a lawyer. Yet Hyman waited eight hours and five minutes before taking the statement. In the estimated two hours between the time the court reporter arrived and the time Hyman went in to talk to Jackie Wilson, the prosecutor seems to have accomplished little other than a few phone calls to make sure that Jackie was brought to Area Two. Jackie’s statement ended at 12:43 PM, and at that point Hyman was again free to take Andrew Wilson’s statement. He didn’t. He finally sat down with Andrew and the court reporter at 6:05 PM, which was 13 hours after the shooter’s arrest.
After that, Wilson said, he was taken to Area One for a lineup. There Burge allegedly put a gun in Wilson’s mouth and told him that if he made a statement he wouldn’t be shocked again. Wilson said that after the lineup he was taken back to Area Two headquarters, where he gave his confession to Hyman and a court reporter.
But Hyman didn’t ask the question. (And despite the great care with which the final 20-page police report was later written, it contains no mention of an offer of medical care.) Nor did he ask if the confession was being given voluntarily. This question is standard practice. Less than three hours earlier, Hyman had taken a court-reported statement from Derrick Martin, who’d been in the car with the Wilson brothers until a short time before the murders. To Martin, Hyman posed a boilerplate version of the “voluntariness” question:
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It’s not unusual for a defense attorney to keep his client away from the state’s attorney’s office, particularly when that office would like to put the client to death. Anything that Wilson might say, the slightest inconsistency (a left turn instead of a right, for example), could be used against him in his criminal trial. Coventry admitted that he wouldn’t cooperate. He also told the Reader that he expected nothing from the state’s attorney but a whitewash; his clients were “thumped” all the time by police and no one ever did anything about it.
