New lawsuit alleges police torture under Burge
Mayor Daley named in separate suit
WLS By Charles Thomas

December 7, 2006 - A lawsuit was filed against the City of Chicago and former police commander Jon Burge Thursday. The man who filed it alleges he was tortured by officers under Burge's command.
This is just the latest lawsuit related to the Jon Burge/Chicago police torture scandal. The alleged torture dates back to the 1970s, and some plaintiffs charge it continued through the early 1990s.

Thirty-three-year-old Harold Hill claimed in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday that he was tortured in 1992 by Chicago police detectives under the last command of Lt. Jon Burge. As a teenager, Hill was convicted of rape and murder after he reportedly confessed. But he was exonerated and released from prison in 2005 after DNA evidence proved he could not have committed the crime.

"I was young, I was scared. I didn't know what to do. I was terrified," said Harold Hill, alleged torture victim.

"Looking back, the system has to ask how it is an innocent man confessed to a crime he didn't commit," said Jon Loevy, attorney for Hill.

Burge, who was an Area Three commander in 1992, was fired the next year for torturing a different murder suspect a decade earlier. Last summer, a special prosecutor concluded Burge and his detectives had beaten, burned, and/or electro-shocked dozens of black male suspects. The prosecutor would not indict the mostly retired cops because the statute of limitations on their alleged crimes had expired.

Hill's lawyers have filed a civil suit seeking money damages.

"Notwithstanding the problems with the confessions, Mr. Hill was tried. He was convicted and spent more than a decade wrongfully incarcerated," Loevy said.

Also Thursday, in another Burge-related lawsuit, a judge granted permission to the attorney for alleged torture victim Aaron Patterson to add Mayor Richard M. Daley as a defendant in Patterson's civil lawsuit. Daley was Cook County state's attorney during most of the 1980's when the office prosecuted dozens of alleged torture victims.

Then-police Superintendent Richard Breczek even wrote a letter to inform Daley that there was medical evidence of torture.

"His state's attorney took the confessions. They put innocent people in prison and never investigated any police torturing people when there is over 200 cases," said Frank Avila, attorney for Aaron Patterson.

Avila says he expects his motion to add Mayor Daley's name as a defendant in the Patterson torture case will be resisted by Daley's attorneys at hearings early next year. It is possible those hearings could happen in February during the height of the mayoral campaign.