Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #360 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Midnight Crew

Transcript

#360 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Midnight Crew · Wrongful Conviction

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, it's Laura and I writer. In twenty twenty, we
0:08
Speaker 1: brought you the truly horrifying story of John Burge, the
0:12
Speaker 1: now disgraced Chicago police officer who oversaw a group of
0:16
Speaker 1: white cops who turned their investigation room into a torture
0:20
Speaker 1: chamber for black men. They called themselves the Midnight Crew.
0:25
Speaker 1: Now there's nothing anyone can do to fully right the
0:28
Speaker 1: wrongs done by John Burge, but the city of Chicago
0:31
Speaker 1: is making remarkable efforts to ameliorate the damage. To date,
0:35
Speaker 1: dozens of John Burge's victims have had their sentences overturned,
0:39
Speaker 1: and in twenty fifteen, the city passed a reparations bill
0:42
Speaker 1: that will compensate the victims and their families. Now, part
0:46
Speaker 1: of that reparations package was meant to include a physical
0:49
Speaker 1: memorial to the victims and to the torture they survived.
0:52
Speaker 1: The idea was that it would serve as an enduring
0:55
Speaker 1: public acknowledgment of the crimes against humanity that took place
0:58
Speaker 1: in Chicago. Like war memorials, it would call on future
1:03
Speaker 1: generations to remember what happened and to stand up to
1:06
Speaker 1: similar abuses in the future. But here's the thing that
1:09
Speaker 1: promise has yet to be fulfilled. The reparations bill has
1:12
Speaker 1: been passed and a design for the memorial has been approved,
1:16
Speaker 1: but city aldermen and the Mayor's office have not allocated
1:20
Speaker 1: the funds for construction. It's estimated that the memorial will
1:23
Speaker 1: cost two point twenty five million dollars, which may sound
1:27
Speaker 1: like a lot of money until you learn that over
1:30
Speaker 1: the years, the city has spent more than thirty seven
1:33
Speaker 1: million dollars defending John Burge in court. It's time to
1:37
Speaker 1: build this memorial. As the old saying goes, those who
1:40
Speaker 1: forget history are doomed to repeat it, and no one
1:43
Speaker 1: should suffer the abuses of the Midnight Crew ever again.
1:54
Speaker 1: Welcome to wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer.
1:58
Speaker 2: And I'm Steve Dressing.
2:02
Speaker 1: You know, we've talked a lot during our podcast about
2:04
Speaker 1: psychological interrogation techniques, but this is a really different case.
2:09
Speaker 1: This is physical torture. It's the kind of thing most
2:11
Speaker 1: people think doesn't happen in the United States, but it did.
2:15
Speaker 2: And it did in my lifetime in Chicago. This was real.
2:21
Speaker 2: I said, how can this be going on? You know,
2:23
Speaker 2: at the end of the twentieth century. I mean This
2:26
Speaker 2: is medieval, This is the stuff of the Spanish Inquisition.
2:31
Speaker 2: Because by and large, by the nineteen fifties, these kinds
2:37
Speaker 2: of third degree tactics were no longer part of law enforcement.
2:42
Speaker 1: You know, Steeve, I never knew what the term third
2:44
Speaker 1: degree meant before I went to law school. So for
2:47
Speaker 1: our audience, it means physical abuse during interrogations, right.
2:51
Speaker 3: You know.
2:52
Speaker 2: Chicago's history with police interrogations is a fascinating one. The
2:57
Speaker 2: third degree thrived in Chicago and thirties, forties and fifties.
3:02
Speaker 2: Then a group of police reformers brought in psychological interrogation
3:07
Speaker 2: techniques that they believed would be less likely to lead
3:12
Speaker 2: to false confessions. But in Chicago, old habits die hard.
3:18
Speaker 1: It's easy for anyone to understand why someone would falsely
3:21
Speaker 1: confess if they're being physically abused or tortured. That's no
3:25
Speaker 1: way to get the truth, let alone justice. Today's story
3:32
Speaker 1: starts on July twenty seventh, nineteen eighty eight. It's summer
3:35
Speaker 1: in Chicago, one of the hottest on record, with temperatures
3:38
Speaker 1: topping one hundred degrees. On the city's predominantly black South Side,
3:43
Speaker 1: a lot of homes are older run down, don't have
3:46
Speaker 1: air conditioning. Economic opportunities are thin, and people sweat just
3:50
Speaker 1: to pay the bills. So when the temperature climbs, tempers
3:54
Speaker 1: run high too. That's true for the residents and for
3:57
Speaker 1: the police. On July twenty seven, though, things get way
4:01
Speaker 1: too hot in a Southside neighborhood called Gage Park. In
4:04
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, a brick bungalow goes up
4:07
Speaker 1: in flames. After firefighters bring the blaze under control, police
4:11
Speaker 1: go inside. They find five bodies, two women who had
4:15
Speaker 1: worked as teacher's aids at a local school, and three
4:18
Speaker 1: young children. All of the kids had been smothered with pillows.
4:22
Speaker 1: One of the women had been beaten and strangled. The
4:24
Speaker 1: other woman had been smothered too. She was the daughter
4:27
Speaker 1: of a Chicago cop. It's a horrible crime, and the
4:31
Speaker 1: case quickly becomes high profile. What Chicago police call a heater.
4:36
Speaker 1: But there's no eyewitnesses, no forensic evidence, no nothing. So
4:39
Speaker 1: police offer a two thousand dollars reward for information. Sure Enough,
4:44
Speaker 1: just a few days later, a prison inmate calls police
4:47
Speaker 1: and claims that his friend, Ronald Kitchen, confessed to him
4:51
Speaker 1: over the phone. Now prison phone calls are recorded and monitored.
4:55
Speaker 1: A quick check of the inmate's phone recordings reveals he
4:58
Speaker 1: was lying. No one he spoke with had ever confessed
5:01
Speaker 1: to anything, but with no other leads, the police decide
5:04
Speaker 1: to go after Ronald' kitchen, and they go after him hard.
5:09
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty eight, Ronald was twenty two years old,
5:11
Speaker 1: and as he admits today, he was no angel back then.
5:15
Speaker 1: With one young child and a second on the way,
5:17
Speaker 1: he made a living by selling cocaine, but he was
5:20
Speaker 1: no killer and never had been. On the evening of
5:22
Speaker 1: August twenty fifth, Ronald leaves his house and heads for
5:25
Speaker 1: the corner store down the block. He's out to buy
5:28
Speaker 1: a gallon of milk and some cookie dough for his
5:30
Speaker 1: two year old son. Before he knows it, Ronald surrounded
5:34
Speaker 1: by police cars. One of the officers says something about
5:37
Speaker 1: a stolen vehicle. Another cop points a gun at him.
5:40
Speaker 1: Ronald knows he had nothing to do with any car theft,
5:43
Speaker 1: so he figures he'll be able to clear up the
5:45
Speaker 1: situation without much difficulty. As the police put Ronald in handcuffs,
5:50
Speaker 1: he hollers to his family down the block, I'll be
5:52
Speaker 1: back in forty five minutes. Police bring Ronald to a
5:56
Speaker 1: south side station called Area three. They throw him into
5:59
Speaker 1: an interrogation room and cuff his hands to an iron
6:02
Speaker 1: ring in the wall, and the account Ronald gives of
6:05
Speaker 1: the next sixteen hours is harrowing. According to Ronald, an
6:10
Speaker 1: officer comes in and asks who have you been talking to?
6:13
Speaker 1: When Ronald doesn't know how to answer, the officer starts
6:16
Speaker 1: punching him in the chest and kicking his stomach. Over
6:20
Speaker 1: the next several hours, that officer would leave, then come
6:22
Speaker 1: back again over and over to ask the same question,
6:26
Speaker 1: who have you been talking to? And to continue the beatings.
6:30
Speaker 1: Sometimes he'd be joined by a second officer. When that
6:33
Speaker 1: officer entered the room, he would remove his name tag
6:36
Speaker 1: before joining the assaults. After hours of beatings, a third
6:40
Speaker 1: officer came into the room alone. He asked if Ronald
6:44
Speaker 1: was okay and if he wanted anything to eat. When
6:47
Speaker 1: Ronald asked to call a lawyer, he says, the officer smiled,
6:51
Speaker 1: picked up the handset from a nearby phone, and smashed
6:54
Speaker 1: it into Ronald's skull. Do you hear ringing?
6:57
Speaker 2: Now?
6:57
Speaker 1: Said the officer. On his way out, He turned off
7:01
Speaker 1: the lights, leaving Ronald in the dark for hours. The
7:05
Speaker 1: beatings continued, with Ronald waiting in agony for the next
7:09
Speaker 1: round to start. The officers focused on areas of his
7:12
Speaker 1: body where damage wouldn't be visible. At one point, officers
7:15
Speaker 1: cuffed both his hands behind his back and used their
7:18
Speaker 1: nightsticks to beat his genitals. But their desire to cover
7:22
Speaker 1: their tracks didn't stop the police from targeting Ronald's head too.
7:25
Speaker 1: They just used a phone book to cushion the blows
7:28
Speaker 1: and avoid leaving a mark.
7:29
Speaker 2: This torture session was clearly premeditated, mapped out in advance.
7:34
Speaker 2: The whole time. They were also calling Ronald racial slurs.
7:38
Speaker 2: The N word just rolled off their tongues. The goal
7:42
Speaker 2: here was total humiliation, physical and mental.
7:47
Speaker 1: Hours of torture went by until Ronald finally broke. He
7:51
Speaker 1: signed a false confession dictated by the police, admitting to
7:55
Speaker 1: the Gage Park killings. Based on that confession, Ronald Kitchen
7:59
Speaker 1: was charged with capital murder, meaning that he was facing
8:02
Speaker 1: the death penalty. At his first court appearance, Ronald told
8:06
Speaker 1: the judge that he'd been tortured. A few days later,
8:09
Speaker 1: Ronald was transferred to a hospital for treatment. At the hospital,
8:13
Speaker 1: his urine ran red with blood. Despite all of this,
8:18
Speaker 1: Ronald's false confession was allowed into evidence against him at trial,
8:21
Speaker 1: along with the testimony of that prison snitch who still
8:25
Speaker 1: claimed that Ronald had admitted the killings. On September nineteenth,
8:29
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety, Ronald Kitchen was convicted of five counts of
8:33
Speaker 1: murder and sent to death row. There, he'd soon discovered
8:37
Speaker 1: he wasn't alone. At least nine other residents of Illinois's
8:41
Speaker 1: death Row had been tortured into confessing too. There was
8:45
Speaker 1: something much bigger going on.
8:55
Speaker 4: This episode is sponsored by AIG, a leading global insurance company,
8:59
Speaker 4: and Paul Weiss Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison, a leading international
9:03
Speaker 4: law firm. The AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal
9:06
Speaker 4: services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals
9:11
Speaker 4: most in need, and recently they announced that working to
9:14
Speaker 4: reform the criminal justice system will become a key pillar
9:17
Speaker 4: of the program's mission. Paul Weiss has long had an
9:21
Speaker 4: unwavering commitment to providing impactful, pro bono legal assistance to
9:25
Speaker 4: the most vulnerable members of our society and in support
9:28
Speaker 4: of the public interest, including extensive work in the criminal
9:32
Speaker 4: justice area.
9:38
Speaker 1: What Ronald endured at Area three was no isolated incident.
9:42
Speaker 1: Ronald Kitchen had encountered a group of white cops who
9:45
Speaker 1: called themselves the Midnight Crew. The Midnight Crew closed cases
9:50
Speaker 1: by torturing black men until they confessed, and they operated
9:54
Speaker 1: under the authority of a Chicago police detective named John Burge.
9:59
Speaker 2: To understand and what happened to Ronald, you have to
10:01
Speaker 2: start asking some tough questions. What kind of police officer
10:07
Speaker 2: would do this to another human being? What kind of
10:11
Speaker 2: person would knowingly break the laws of common decency, the
10:16
Speaker 2: laws of humanity just to get a confession.
10:20
Speaker 1: When it comes to John Burge, the answer is complex.
10:23
Speaker 1: Here's our friend John Conroy, the journalist who is investigative reporting,
10:28
Speaker 1: exposed the Midnight Crew.
10:30
Speaker 5: John Burge was a very driven police officer. Initially he
10:34
Speaker 5: was a patrol officer, and then he was promoted to
10:36
Speaker 5: the detective, and then he made sergeant, and then he
10:38
Speaker 5: made lieutenant. He seemed to me like somebody who would
10:43
Speaker 5: show up at my family's picnic and if my elderly
10:47
Speaker 5: aunt had a problem starting her car on the way home,
10:51
Speaker 5: he would have been the first woman out there trying
10:53
Speaker 5: to get it working. That just seemed to me to
10:56
Speaker 5: be the kind of guy he was on the other hand,
10:58
Speaker 5: he brutally tortured people.
11:01
Speaker 1: John Burge was a Chicago Southsider born in nineteen forty
11:05
Speaker 1: seven who grew up in a white enclave called South Deering.
11:09
Speaker 3: He grew up in a working class, white neighborhood on
11:13
Speaker 3: the South Side of Chicago that, during the late nineteen sixties,
11:18
Speaker 3: went from white to black over the course of about
11:21
Speaker 3: four years, and his family was among the.
11:25
Speaker 5: Last to move out. He then went off to college,
11:30
Speaker 5: flunked out after about a semester, went home and enlisted
11:35
Speaker 5: in the military.
11:37
Speaker 1: Burg served as a military police officer in South Korea
11:40
Speaker 1: and Vietnam. For his service, he earned the Bronze Star
11:43
Speaker 1: Medal and Purple Heart. After he returned to Chicago, Burge
11:47
Speaker 1: joined the police force and racked up more than a
11:49
Speaker 1: dozen commendations.
11:51
Speaker 5: Everyone wants torturers to be Hannibal elector or somebody like
11:57
Speaker 5: that out of sounds of the lamps. Everyone tortures to
12:01
Speaker 5: be monsters, and they're basically normal people like you and me.
12:05
Speaker 5: Burnch for instance, once saved the woman, an African American woman,
12:09
Speaker 5: from committing suicide. She had a gun to her throat,
12:14
Speaker 5: She pulled the trigger and he got his thumb in
12:17
Speaker 5: the firing mechanism and it didn't go off.
12:19
Speaker 1: But his apparent heroism wasn't the full story, because John
12:23
Speaker 1: Burge and his underlings ended up being accused of extracting
12:27
Speaker 1: confessions from more than two hundred black men between nineteen
12:31
Speaker 1: seventy two and nineteen ninety one using torture.
12:35
Speaker 5: You know, in Chicago, the cops were under tremendous pressure
12:39
Speaker 5: because we had an astronomical homicide People talk about homicides
12:43
Speaker 5: in Chicago now, they were eighty percent higher in the
12:49
Speaker 5: early nineties, and so you know, they had to soft crimes.
12:54
Speaker 5: They were getting information. That's another reason why people do it.
12:58
Speaker 5: They actually might think that they're helping out the good
13:02
Speaker 5: people of the community by torturing the bad ones. You
13:07
Speaker 5: do get information when you torture people, you just don't
13:10
Speaker 5: get accurate information. People will say anything to stop the torture.
13:14
Speaker 1: Accusations against the Midnight Crew started emerging. Just a few
13:17
Speaker 1: months before Ronald Kitchen was convicted. In January nineteen ninety,
13:21
Speaker 1: John Conroy published an investigative report in The Chicago Reader
13:25
Speaker 1: entitled House of Screams.
13:28
Speaker 5: The bird story came to me because I was writing
13:30
Speaker 5: a book on torture, but not torturers, and countries that
13:34
Speaker 5: people normally suspected of torture, and democracies. And then a
13:38
Speaker 5: friend of mine called me and said, there's this guy
13:40
Speaker 5: named Andrew Wilson. He claims he was given electric shock
13:43
Speaker 5: by the Chicago police, and his testimony was just so
13:48
Speaker 5: compelling the police could not explain away his injuries.
13:53
Speaker 1: Andrew Wilson was a suspect in the murder of two
13:56
Speaker 1: Chicago cops. A house of screams told the story of
13:59
Speaker 1: what happened to him in police custody. The rumor was
14:02
Speaker 1: that during Wilson's interrogation, Burge and his men used techniques
14:06
Speaker 1: that Burge learned as a military police officer back in Vietnam.
14:10
Speaker 5: Andrew Wilson emerged from the police station with these very
14:13
Speaker 5: peculiar marks on his ears and his nose in the
14:16
Speaker 5: shape of alligator clips. They were scabs, and he had
14:20
Speaker 5: parallel burns on his chest and a big burn on
14:23
Speaker 5: his thigh. He said he'd been held against a hot
14:26
Speaker 5: radiator while electric shock was administered by a hand crank
14:30
Speaker 5: device not dissimilar from a field telephone used in Vietnam.
14:35
Speaker 5: And because he'd shot dead two caps, nobody wanted to
14:38
Speaker 5: believe him.
14:39
Speaker 2: Nobody's going to have any sympathy for cop killers, and
14:43
Speaker 2: Burge and his Midnight crew knew that they would be
14:46
Speaker 2: more likely to get away with torturing a cop killer
14:50
Speaker 2: than anybody else.
14:54
Speaker 5: You know, frankly, when we get in an uproar about torture,
15:00
Speaker 5: it's over the torture of people we like, somebody like
15:03
Speaker 5: say Nelson Mandela, and we are outraged. But if you
15:09
Speaker 5: torture somebody whom we don't like, oh that's no problem
15:13
Speaker 5: at all. So, you know, I think the true test
15:16
Speaker 5: of a society is can you stand up and defend
15:19
Speaker 5: the rights of people whom you abhor.
15:26
Speaker 1: During Andrew Wilson's trial, his attorneys started receiving letters in
15:30
Speaker 1: Chicago police envelopes from an inside whistleblower. The department's torture problem,
15:36
Speaker 1: it seemed, went much further than Andrew Wilson.
15:39
Speaker 5: The letters provided a roadmap for anybody who wanted to investigate,
15:44
Speaker 5: because they listed the people who went along with the torture,
15:47
Speaker 5: and then it listed also the weak links, people who
15:52
Speaker 5: didn't like Birch. They wouldn't be asked to participate in
15:56
Speaker 5: the torture, but they would have been around a police
16:01
Speaker 5: station would have known about it.
16:03
Speaker 1: After Conroy's story about Andrew Wilson ran an avalanche of
16:07
Speaker 1: other allegations came forward. There were men who had plastic
16:10
Speaker 1: bags put over their heads, men who were waterboarded with
16:13
Speaker 1: seven up, men who'd had their testicles stood on during interrogation.
16:18
Speaker 1: All black men tortured by all white cops.
16:22
Speaker 5: Of course, I think race was a factor in all
16:24
Speaker 5: of this. A lot of the abuse that was inflicted
16:28
Speaker 5: was not just physical, but it was saw verbal, and
16:32
Speaker 5: it was regular use of the N word.
16:34
Speaker 1: The stories were horribly similar, and the evidence was there
16:37
Speaker 1: from the beginning. One torture victim, Aaron Patterson, managed to
16:41
Speaker 1: leave a visible cry for help in the interrogation room.
16:44
Speaker 2: I just picture this. This guy is being tortured and
16:48
Speaker 2: he's scratching this message in a metal bench with a
16:51
Speaker 2: paper clip, and the message couldn't be clearer. Please threaten
16:56
Speaker 2: me with violence, slapped and suffocated me with plastics. No
17:01
Speaker 2: lawyer or dad signed false statement to murder. Why did
17:06
Speaker 2: he do this? He did it because he was afraid
17:09
Speaker 2: he wouldn't survive the torture, and that even if he
17:12
Speaker 2: did survive, he was afraid that no one would believe him.
17:17
Speaker 1: Aaron did survive, and one of the other survivors was
17:20
Speaker 1: Ronald Kitchen.
17:21
Speaker 2: Ronald later realized that the second officer who participated in
17:24
Speaker 2: his interrogation, the one who took off his name tag
17:28
Speaker 2: before beating him, well, that was no ordinary member of
17:32
Speaker 2: the Midnight Crew. That was John Burge himself.
17:37
Speaker 1: By the time John Conroy published House of Screams, John
17:41
Speaker 1: Burge and the Midnight Crews torture campaign had been going
17:44
Speaker 1: on for nearly twenty years. Meanwhile, Burge had been promoted
17:48
Speaker 1: to commander, outranking ninety nine percent of the other officers
17:51
Speaker 1: on the Chicago Police force.
17:53
Speaker 5: So my article came out in January nineteen ninety. As
17:57
Speaker 5: we were approaching press time, I was really uneasy. I thought,
18:03
Speaker 5: Oh Jesus, you know we're going to go with a
18:06
Speaker 5: story that says that the Chicago police engaged in torture.
18:11
Speaker 5: Nobody had said anything of the kind before. I thought
18:15
Speaker 5: there would be a furre and we might ensue, even
18:18
Speaker 5: though we had done every legal check that could be done.
18:22
Speaker 1: Burge was a powerful man, but the allegations against him
18:25
Speaker 1: were too numerous and too similar to ignore. In nineteen
18:29
Speaker 1: ninety one, John Burge was suspended from the Chicago Police force.
18:33
Speaker 1: The local police union rushed to Burges's defense, throwing him
18:36
Speaker 1: a fundraiser at a union hall.
18:39
Speaker 5: I was there. It was packed with more than a
18:42
Speaker 5: thousand people, probably most of them cops, but I'm sure
18:46
Speaker 5: some of them were states attorneys, because I know that
18:50
Speaker 5: it was advertised in the State's Attorney's office.
18:52
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, more and more allegations of police torture were coming forward, beatings,
18:57
Speaker 1: cattle prods, Russian roulette, Coggo. Police board held a hearing
19:01
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two into Burges's alleged misconduct.
19:04
Speaker 5: Basically, it was an employment fitness hearing. It was not
19:08
Speaker 5: a criminal case, and the city had attorneys present the
19:13
Speaker 5: case against Birch and they did a pretty darn good job.
19:17
Speaker 5: I thought they actually sold the police Board on the
19:21
Speaker 5: idea that something had indeed happened here.
19:24
Speaker 1: During the hearing, an internal police report came to light.
19:28
Speaker 1: It suggested that police supervisors had known about the midnight
19:31
Speaker 1: cruise systemic brutality for years. In nineteen ninety three, the
19:36
Speaker 1: police board found that John Burge had participated in physical
19:40
Speaker 1: abuse and fired him from the Chicago Police now.
19:44
Speaker 5: The Police Board's decision was remarkable in that it never
19:48
Speaker 5: used the word torture. It said, John Birge did kick
19:52
Speaker 5: and or punch and or deny medical attention to and
19:55
Speaker 5: or and or and or you couldn't tell, Oh, what
19:59
Speaker 5: exactly do you think happened? So as a result of
20:03
Speaker 5: that decision, Burgs got fired, but he was allowed to
20:06
Speaker 5: retire with his pension.
20:07
Speaker 1: Another agency, the Office of Professional Standards, began investigating too,
20:12
Speaker 1: and it released a report that went a step further.
20:15
Speaker 1: The investigation found that Chicago police had taken part in
20:18
Speaker 1: a systematic, planned torture campaign that command officers knew about. Meanwhile,
20:24
Speaker 1: Ronald Kitchen, one of the victims of that torture, was
20:27
Speaker 1: still on death row for a crime he didn't commit.
20:30
Speaker 1: And remember, he was there along with other men who'd
20:33
Speaker 1: been tortured just like him by John Burge and the
20:35
Speaker 1: Midnight Crew. For years, Ronald's appeals failed, and the system
20:40
Speaker 1: turned a blind eye to the unthinkable abuse he suffered.
20:43
Speaker 1: But Ronald and the others on death row didn't stay silent.
20:46
Speaker 1: The group began finding their voices, speaking out about the
20:50
Speaker 1: fact that the Midnight Crew had tortured innocent people. Into
20:53
Speaker 1: falsely confessing.
20:55
Speaker 2: What's amazing to me is how these men found their voice.
20:59
Speaker 2: They did so by re enacting each other's trials. You
21:04
Speaker 2: have to remember that when people are in prison, every
21:08
Speaker 2: instinct tells you not to talk to other inmates about
21:11
Speaker 2: your case. But these men, they acted out their case.
21:16
Speaker 2: They played the role of prosecutor of defense, attorney, of
21:20
Speaker 2: police witness, and in some cases they convicted one another.
21:27
Speaker 2: That process gave them agency, and at the end of
21:31
Speaker 2: the day, all of these men became great storytellers. They
21:35
Speaker 2: could not only tell the story of what happened to
21:38
Speaker 2: each of them, but they could tell the stories of
21:42
Speaker 2: each other.
21:44
Speaker 1: As the Midnight Crew torture scandal blew up, Ronald's personal
21:48
Speaker 1: fight for justice became unignorable. In two thousand and one,
21:51
Speaker 1: Ronald got a new team of post conviction lawyers. They
21:54
Speaker 1: discovered previously undisclosed evidence about that prison sniche who claimed
21:58
Speaker 1: Ronald had confessed. Turns out the snitch had received money
22:02
Speaker 1: an early release from prison in exchange for his false testimony.
22:07
Speaker 1: That evidence, plus the discovery of the Midnight Crew torture scandal,
22:11
Speaker 1: led prosecutors to agree that Ronald's conviction should be thrown out.
22:15
Speaker 1: On July seventh, two thousand and nine, Ronald Kitchen became
22:18
Speaker 1: a free, exonerated man. Six weeks later, he was awarded
22:22
Speaker 1: a certificate of innocence. Those forty five minutes that Ronald
22:38
Speaker 1: had expected to be gone they turned into twenty one
22:41
Speaker 1: years behind bars. The Gage part killings have never been solved.
22:46
Speaker 1: As for the other men on death row with Ronald,
22:48
Speaker 1: over the years, several of them walked free, to those
22:52
Speaker 1: who remained in prison had their sentences commuted to life,
22:55
Speaker 1: and their continuing to fight their cases. And what about
22:58
Speaker 1: John Birge. Well, as we told you, he got kicked
23:01
Speaker 1: off the Chicago Police Force. But neither John Burge nor
23:05
Speaker 1: any member of the Midnight Crew was ever charged with
23:08
Speaker 1: or convicted of any act of torture because the statute
23:11
Speaker 1: of limitations had passed by the time the truth came
23:14
Speaker 1: to light. Maybe we can find some small measure of
23:17
Speaker 1: justice though, in the fact that John Birge did go
23:20
Speaker 1: to prison for lying about torture. In twenty ten, Burge
23:25
Speaker 1: was sued by someone he'd tortured. During the lawsuit, Burge
23:28
Speaker 1: gave a sworn statement denying that any abuse had occurred
23:32
Speaker 1: on his watch. That falsehood was enough to convict Burge
23:36
Speaker 1: of perjury. John Burge served from twenty eleven to twenty
23:40
Speaker 1: fourteen in federal prison, a much shorter length of time
23:43
Speaker 1: than many of his victims spent behind bars. After he
23:47
Speaker 1: left prison, Burge gave an interview calling the torture victim's
23:51
Speaker 1: human vermin. He took up residence in Florida, still collecting
23:55
Speaker 1: his police pension four thousand dollars a month. He even
23:59
Speaker 1: drove a boat called Vigilante.
24:01
Speaker 5: Well, no justice was not served in this case. I
24:04
Speaker 5: mean he was sentenced to four years in prison. He
24:06
Speaker 5: didn't serve that long. Birge was convicted thirty seven years
24:11
Speaker 5: after the first time. We know that he used electric shock.
24:15
Speaker 2: You know, at the end of the day, John Burge
24:18
Speaker 2: was released after only serving a few years in prison,
24:22
Speaker 2: while Ronald and the other men on death row spent
24:25
Speaker 2: decades in some of the harshest prisons in Illinois system.
24:30
Speaker 2: That's not justice.
24:31
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, John Burge died at his home in Florida.
24:35
Speaker 1: After his death, the police union posted a statement on
24:38
Speaker 1: Facebook saying that the Fraternal Order of Police does not
24:42
Speaker 1: believe the full story about the Birge case has ever
24:44
Speaker 1: been told They're probably right. Decades after Burge's reign of terror,
24:50
Speaker 1: allegations of torture by the Midnight Crew are still coming
24:53
Speaker 1: to light. In two thousand and nine, the State of
24:55
Speaker 1: Illinois formed a Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission to review
24:59
Speaker 1: and respond to these allegations. Meanwhile, lawsuits upon lawsuits have
25:03
Speaker 1: been filed and are still being filed. So far, the
25:06
Speaker 1: Midnight Crew has cost the City of Chicago one hundred
25:09
Speaker 1: million dollars in brutality settlements, defense costs, and reparations.
25:14
Speaker 2: A reparations ordinance passed by the city Council created a
25:20
Speaker 2: fund so that many of these torture survivors, those with
25:24
Speaker 2: credible claims of torture, could be compensated for what happened
25:29
Speaker 2: to them. It was a recognition and ownership of this
25:33
Speaker 2: problem by the City of Chicago, and it's never happened
25:36
Speaker 2: before in the United States.
25:39
Speaker 1: One lawsuit filed on behalf of fifty torture victims settled
25:43
Speaker 1: under the condition that the story of John Burge and
25:46
Speaker 1: systemic Chicago police misconduct be included in the Chicago Public
25:50
Speaker 1: Schools high school curriculum so that everyone remembers.
25:55
Speaker 2: We can never forget the Chicago torture scandal, because if
25:59
Speaker 2: you don't remember, then history can repeat itself. We have
26:04
Speaker 2: to learn the lessons of history, and the best way
26:07
Speaker 2: to do it is to teach young minds about it.
26:11
Speaker 1: And that's where you'll find Ronald Kitchen today. He and
26:14
Speaker 1: other survivors of the Midnight Crew visit classrooms across Chicago
26:18
Speaker 1: where they talk to teenagers about what they endured and
26:21
Speaker 1: what they hope can be learned from their ordeals. And
26:24
Speaker 1: if you pay attention to the way Chicago's kids react
26:27
Speaker 1: to these stories, you'll have hope for the future. They listen,
26:31
Speaker 1: They stay to hear the end of the story, even
26:33
Speaker 1: after the bell rings. What do you think about all
26:36
Speaker 1: the recent social media videos of police brutality? Students ask,
26:40
Speaker 1: how can we as young people make a change. For
26:44
Speaker 1: his part, Ronald Kitchen has no quick answers, but he
26:47
Speaker 1: does have a quick sense of justice. As he told
26:50
Speaker 1: students at one Chicago high school, there's no gray area
26:53
Speaker 1: in torture. You need to see it for what it
26:56
Speaker 1: really is. It's black and it's white. Hello, Hey, Ronald, Hey,
27:06
Speaker 1: how you doing. It's Laura and Steve, how are you doing?
27:09
Speaker 2: I'm good.
27:12
Speaker 1: When you visit those schools, what do you hope the
27:14
Speaker 1: kids learn from hearing you speak?
27:16
Speaker 6: Well, I think the meaning of going to the schools
27:20
Speaker 6: is to let them know that this could happen to anybody.
27:23
Speaker 6: It's mind boggling because the Boogeyman not just touch me,
27:27
Speaker 6: stump me, kick me, tounch me, slap me. The Boogeyman
27:31
Speaker 6: did all this to me.
27:33
Speaker 1: And then your job became to fight the Boogeyman. Yeah,
27:37
Speaker 1: it wasn't just one bad guy. You were finding a
27:39
Speaker 1: whole system that let these guys do what they did.
27:42
Speaker 1: For so long.
27:43
Speaker 6: We was fight that could lad.
27:44
Speaker 5: We didn't have a rock.
27:45
Speaker 6: We had a penciling paper, and that penston paper came
27:48
Speaker 6: out to be stronger than that rock could evidence.
27:50
Speaker 2: It's hard for people to understand how you could get
27:54
Speaker 2: the space or the time on death row to reenact
27:59
Speaker 2: these trials.
28:00
Speaker 6: We had a couple of good captains back there. They
28:02
Speaker 6: let us have law classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I
28:05
Speaker 6: thank them for helping us with the process of gaining
28:09
Speaker 6: our freedom.
28:10
Speaker 1: You and the other guys they're organized, worked together and
28:14
Speaker 1: made a big, big change even though you were locked up.
28:18
Speaker 1: You know, do you talk to kids in schools about
28:21
Speaker 1: how they should come together and work to make change
28:24
Speaker 1: in the same way find their own voices.
28:26
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's the whole point of helping them finding voices.
28:29
Speaker 2: Your voice is your best weapon.
28:31
Speaker 3: If we found our voices.
28:32
Speaker 6: In a depth of hell, your voice should be heard
28:35
Speaker 6: no matter.
28:35
Speaker 5: Where you went.
28:37
Speaker 1: What are you enjoying in life these days, Ronald?
28:40
Speaker 5: My family?
28:41
Speaker 6: I think that's the best, and a don't funny game
28:43
Speaker 6: with my little family.
28:45
Speaker 2: Did I hear you say you were on your way
28:47
Speaker 2: to get a pony?
28:49
Speaker 3: Yeah?
28:49
Speaker 1: Today is my daughter's birthday.
28:51
Speaker 6: She's turning nine and the theme is Cowboy. So uh yeah,
28:55
Speaker 6: I'm gonna get the pony.
28:56
Speaker 2: Now, that's so nice.
28:58
Speaker 6: I'm trying to get this she buggers.
29:06
Speaker 2: When you think of this scandal, you have to think
29:09
Speaker 2: about not only Burge and his Midnight crew. You have
29:14
Speaker 2: to think about the armies of people who knew about
29:17
Speaker 2: it and kept quiet every time somebody was tortured. There
29:22
Speaker 2: were police officers in that station who heard the screams,
29:26
Speaker 2: and then there were states attorneys who came in and
29:29
Speaker 2: had to write out the confessions. There were lawyers who
29:33
Speaker 2: heard these stories from their clients and judges who heard
29:37
Speaker 2: these stories in court.
29:38
Speaker 1: A lot of folks had to know about what was
29:40
Speaker 1: going on for so many years.
29:42
Speaker 2: Well, this was a case of systemic racism, not just
29:47
Speaker 2: of a few bad apples. It was an open secret
29:52
Speaker 2: and not so secret open secret, and you know, think
29:57
Speaker 2: about what that does to these communities.
30:00
Speaker 1: The court system may have turned a blind eye to
30:02
Speaker 1: these defendant stories, but they must have told their family
30:05
Speaker 1: members and their friends and their neighbors what happened to them.
30:09
Speaker 1: And this repeated story of abuse must have leaked out
30:12
Speaker 1: and saturated the South Side.
30:14
Speaker 2: An open wound that for years was not addressed.
30:21
Speaker 1: Injustices. Like the Chicago police torture scandal, are at the
30:25
Speaker 1: root of what our country is experiencing right now, a
30:28
Speaker 1: national reckoning with race and the criminal justice system. These
30:32
Speaker 1: stories need to be told so that we can collectively
30:35
Speaker 1: acknowledge the wrongs and start having a real discussion about
30:39
Speaker 1: what's right Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a production of
30:50
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number
30:54
Speaker 1: one Special thanks to our executive producers Jason Flamm and
30:58
Speaker 1: Kevin Wardis. Our production team is headed by senior producer
31:02
Speaker 1: and Pope along with producers Joshi Hammer and Jess Shane.
31:06
Speaker 1: Our show is mixed by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is
31:09
Speaker 1: our intrepid intern. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
31:13
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura
31:16
Speaker 1: and I Wrider.
31:17
Speaker 2: And you can follow me on Twitter at s Drizzen.
31:21
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit wrongfulconvictionpodcast dot com.
31:25
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
31:29
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
31:33
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction