CHICAGO (AP) — A former Chicago police commander convicted of lying about the torture of suspects told a federal judge Friday he was sorry his case has harmed the reputation of the police department he loved — but he stopped well short of admitting any guilt.
Standing before the court, Jon Burge said he knew his case brought the department into disrepute and “for that, I am deeply sorry.” While he continued to insist that he isn’t the person who’s been “vilified” by the media, he didn’t specifically address the allegations that he and officers under his command spent decades beating, shocking and suffocating suspects into giving confessions.
Burge was fired from the department in 1993 and choked back tears as he talked about how the case cost him his job and his reputation.
“I’m 63 years old, and while I try to keep a brave face, in reality, I am a broken man,” he said.
Burge’s name has become synonymous with police brutality in the third-largest U.S. city, with allegations stretching back nearly 40 years. Dozens of suspects — almost all of them black men — claimed Burge and his officers tortured them into confessing to crimes from robbery to murder. Some were sentenced to death, and the case has affected the state’s debate over the death penalty.
Burge’s insistence that he never participated in or witnessed police abuse is part of the reason prosecutors have asked U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow to hand down a lengthy sentence. Defense attorneys have asked for a sentence of less than three years. Lefkow said she’d announce her decision Friday afternoon.
Earlier Friday, the sister of a former death row inmate testified that her family went through 16 years of torment after her brother was tortured by Chicago police and then wrongly convicted.
Robin Hobley raised her voice in anger and then broke down in tears as she talked about her brother Madison Hobley, who was sentenced to death for a 1987 fire that killed seven people, including his wife and infant son. Hobley was later pardoned following allegations that detectives had tortured him to get him to confess. Robin Hobley looked at Burge and told him directly that he had no idea what he put their family through.
“You put us through 16 years of torment . . . of people believing my brother was a murderer, and he wasn’t,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion. “You have no idea what you did to our family.”
“We believed in the system, we believed in the police,” she said.
Burge never faced criminal charges for abuse. The perjury and obstruction of justice charges against him claim he lied in a civil lawsuit filed by Madison Hobley, who settled with the city for $7.5 million.
In 2003, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan released four condemned men from death row after Ryan said Burge extracted confessions from them using torture. The allegations of torture and coercion eventually led to a still-standing moratorium on Illinois’ death penalty. A bill to abolish capital punishment in the state is awaiting Gov. Pat Quinn’s signature.
Witnesses for Burge said the man they know isn’t the same person described by victims and prosecutors.
Burge’s older brother, Jeffrey, called him “a genuinely caring person.”
Burge’s lawyers also argue the judge should take into account Burge’s military service and decades fighting crime.
More than 30 people, many of them police officers, have sent letters on Burge’s behalf to Lefkow, with one calling him a “policeman’s policeman.”
Burge and others also pled for leniency based on his poor health. He’s been diagnosed with prostate cancer, congestive heart failure, sleep apnea and has had double knee replacement.
His brother asked Lefkow to be “humane,” saying, “almost any sentence will be a death sentence, and I don’t want to see him die in prison.”
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Associated Press writer Michael Tarm contributed to this report.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
