Woman upset son not freed after conviction overturned
Man allegedly was beaten into confessing under Burge command
Gerald Reed, whose conviction for a double murder was overturned earlier thisweekover longtime allegations he was beaten into confessing by former Chicago police detectives under the command of disgraced exCmdr. Jon Burge, won’t be released from custody in time for Christmas.
The decision Friday by special Cook County prosecutors appointed to handle the Burge-related case — forcing Reed to a second trial without the confession as evidence — left his mother livid.
“I’m past disappointed. I’m very angry,” Armanda Shackelford, with tears in her eyes and her voice rising, told reporters after the hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building. “You haven’t done enough to my son already? You denied him bond?”
Reed’s attorneys and supporters hoped prosecutors would drop the charges or that Judge Thomas Gainer would release him on an affordable bond.
Special prosecutor Robert Milan, who gave no reason in court for the decision to seek Reed’s retrial, was given until Jan. 9 to respond in writing to the defense request for Reed’s release.
Gainer grantedReed, 54, a new trial Wednesday after extensive hearings on his accusations that hewas beaten into confessing.
The retrial will take place before a different judge, though, because Gainer is slated to retire soon.
“Thank you, your honor, for your ruling,” Reed told Gainer at the end of Friday’s hearing. “Thank you for your due diligence and being a good judge, for all the years that you’ve been here. Good luck on your future.”
Reed’s attorney, Elliot Zinger, expressed confidence that Reed would be vindicated at a second trial. Sentenced to life in prison for the 1990 murders of Pamela Powers and Willie Williams on the South Side, he has spent nearly three decades in custody.
In the days following his arrest, Reed alleges, Detective Victor Breska, since retired, kicked him so hard that he broke a rod that had been placed in Reed’s leg to aid in his healing from a gunshotwound.
A report by the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission concluded therewas no evidence that the rod was broken before Reed’s arrest or after he arrived at Cook County Jail. The only “plausible explanation’’ was the beating at the police station, the commission said.
Reed said the beating stopped when Breska’s partner, Detective Michael Kill, pulled Breska off Reed. Kill never reported the beating.
The rod likely broke on its own as part of the leg bone’s natural healing process, the special prosecutors maintained, and in the hours after his interrogation Reed did not show any sign he was in severe pain.
In granting Reed a new trial Wednesday, however, Gainer noted correctional officer Clarence English had testified that he saw Reed lying on the floor in the jail’s intake area. Reed told him he had been beaten by police, English said.
The special prosecutors also argued that Reed’s attorneys presented no “reliable evidence” that Kill was substantially involved in the alleged beating.
Zinger, though, called the now- deceased Kill “one of the most notorious detectives in the city of Chicago.”
“Kill in this case is a central figure, though, even if he didn’t do the striking,” Zinger said during closing arguments. “He threatened Mr. Reed. He knew about the beating. He was outside the door, as Mr. Reed testified, while Breska was beating him. And he also came in and played good cop and pulled Breska off him.”
Reed’s case marked the second major development this week in a Burge-related case. On Tuesday, Milan agreed to throw out murder charges against ArnoldDay.
In 1992, Day alleged, other detectives working under Burge pushed him up against a wall and threatened to throw him out a window, coercing him into confessing to the South Side murder of Gerrod Erving, according to a court filing by his attorney, SteveGreenberg.
Day was released from custody Wednesday after more than 26 years in custody, Greenberg said.
Scores of AfricanAmerican men accused Burge and his colleagues of torturing or abusing them since the 1970s at a South Side police station.
Burge, who died in September, was convicted in federal court of lying about his knowledge of the torture and was sentenced to 4 1⁄ years in prison. 2