Thu, Mar. 08, 2007

City asks judge to block Daley deposition in torture case
MIKE ROBINSON
Associated Press

CHICAGO - City attorneys asked a federal judge Thursday to throw out a lower court's order that Mayor Richard M. Daley give a deposition in a lawsuit filed by a former death row inmate who says police tortured him into confessing to a murder he didn't commit.

City attorneys told U.S. District Judge Marvin Aspen that forcing Daley to submit to questioning under oath would be "premature and may be unnecessary" and runs counter to previous decisions limiting how much public officials' time can be consumed by such lawsuits.

"A busy public official should not be compelled to sit for a deposition unless there is a real need for a deposition and until the plaintiff has pursued other available avenues for discovery of the same subject matter," city attorneys said in a motion filed Thursday night.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Geraldine Soat Brown on Feb. 22 gave attorneys for former inmate Madison Hobley permission to get a deposition from Daley, who was Cook County state's attorney when Hobley was sent to prison for murder.

"If they require me to be deposed, I have no problems with that," Daley said at a news conference the next day.

Hobley is one of several former black death row inmates who have filed lawsuits saying Chicago detectives tortured them to obtain confessions to murders they didn't commit.

Brown gave Hobley's attorneys permission to ask Daley about the circumstances surrounding the alleged torture in 1982 of Andrew Wilson, who was arrested in the killing of two police officers. A doctor examined Wilson's severely burned body and notified authorities. Attorneys for Hobley and another inmate who has filed suit, Darrell Cannon, say word of Wilson's condition and possible torture may have reached Daley.

They want to take a deposition from Daley to find out how much he knew about what happened to the prisoner.

The controversy over whether Chicago police under Lt. Jon Burge, former commander of the Area 2 violent crimes unit, tortured suspects has been simmering for years. Burge was fired in the early 1990s on the grounds that Wilson was mistreated in police custody.

Special prosecutors appointed by the Cook County Circuit Court reported last year that in the 1970s and 80s numerous black men were tortured by police. But they said the cases were too old to bring criminal charges.

Brown said in her Feb. 22 decision that deposing Daley "could well lead to potentially admissible evidence regarding whether the mistreatment of African-American suspects reflected a policy or a practice by the city that denied equal protection of the laws to those suspects."

The city's motion did not concede that Daley knew anything about the alleged torture of Wilson. But it said that even if he had, it would not necessarily show much to support Hobley's suit.

"The mere fact that then-State's Attorney Daley may have known of Andrew Wilson's torture and abuse claim does not establish that there was, or that he knew, of any alleged municipal policy or practice of violation of the protection rights of African-American suspects," it said.

A called to the office of Hobley's attorney, Jon Loevy, was not immediately returned Thursday night.