The dark history of police torture under Jon Burge
“The Torture Machine,” the title of a sobering new book about police torture in Chicago by civil rights attorney Flint Taylor, has two meanings.
One refers to the black box used to deliver electric shocks to suspects at Area 2 and Area 3 police stations under former Commander Jon Burge.
The other refers to the political, judicial and bureaucratic machinery that allowed police torture to go unpunished for decades, undermining justice, sending innocent men to Death Row and seriously damaging the trust between the police, prosecutors and black residents of Chicago.
It’s not an easy read, but “The Torture Machine” offers a critical piece of Chicago history. Written in a straightforward style by someone on the front lines of a 50-year fight, the book recounts the courageous persistence of both the lawyers fighting for victims of state-sanctioned abuse and the victims themselves, who had to replay the worst moments of their lives over and over in court proceedings.
It also shows how both the city and county governments, by turning a blind eye to crimes committed under their jurisdiction, cost taxpayers more than $170 million in legal fees, investigations and settlements.
Flint Taylor is one of the founding members of the People’s Law Office, a civil rights firm that specializes in wrongful conviction cases. He starts his story with the killing of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton back in 1969. Through a civil lawsuit, the People’s Law Office challenged the official version of Hampton’s death as a gunfight between Black Panthers and Chicago police, and instead showed a conspiracy to murder Hampton.
Taylor also tells of other People’s Law Office battles — such as its representation of Steven Buckley, falsely accused in the murder of 11-year-old Jeanine Nicarico, and the civil case on behalf of prisoners injured or tortured during the Attica prison uprising.
But the heart of the book is the torture allegations against Burge and his team of “ass kickers” in the Chicago Police Department, beginning with the case of brothers Andrew and Jackie Wilson, accused of killing two police officers in 1982.
It was a “heater” case, and authorities wanted it resolved quickly. To coerce his confession, Andrew Wilson was handcuffed to a hot radiator and received electric shocks to his nose, ears and between his legs. Jackie Wilson was also tortured.
A Cook County jail doctor examined Andrew Wilson’s unusual injuries and demanded an investigation in a letter to then-Police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek, Taylor said. Brzeczek wrote to former Mayor Richard M. Daley, then the Cook County state’s attorney, asking how to proceed. An investigation did not happen, Taylor writes.
In taking on the Wilson case, the People’s Law Office learned about other torture allegations. Defendant by defendant, the lawyers gradually learn of what Reader reporter John Conroy called the “House of Screams,” where suspects were subjected to shocks, beatings, burns and suffocation with typewriter covers or plastic bags.
It was not easy to bring the facts to light, or to get the public to care about them, Taylor recalled. The torture victims were not always sympathetic, while Burge was a decorated Vietnam veteran. The lawyers took their civil rights cases before judges that were sometimes comically hostile, such as the erratic federal jurist Brian Barnett Duff.
Through years of investigations and court battles, it became clear to Taylor and his colleagues that they were sitting on an “iceberg of torture evidence.” The evidence of torture against more than a 100 victims eventually helped lead to the emptying of Death Row by former Gov. George Ryan, to Burge going to prison for perjury and obstruction of justice, and city reparations for victims.
The narrative contains alarming details, including that Burge had a confectioner’s depiction of the electric shock box on his going-away party cake. Taylor also recounts horrifying examples of official racism, including a “n— by the pound” contest conducted at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office in the 1970s. “Convicted defendants were weighed, tabulations made, and yearly commendations awarded to the prosecutors with the greatest collective weight of convictees,” Taylor writes.
Taylor does not pretend to be neutral. He is an advocate, and makes clear that he holds Daley and other high-ranking Illinois politicians responsible for failing to stop Burge and his associates.
But Taylor’s account is not overly emotional — the book has a “just-the-facts” style and is free of the kind of maudlin, self-aggrandizing statements that often litter attorney memoirs. There’s little personal biography here, other than Taylor reporting that he met his wife while working on a case and that his daughter later got involved in civil rights law. While describing his own actions, Taylor also gives abundant credit to the journalists, judges, community activists and other attorneys who helped to move the cases forward.
The story of state-sponsored crimes in Chicago is powerful enough without embellishment, and Taylor lets it speak for itself. It’s a terrifying tale of justice lost, and eventually found.