Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #166 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - The Midnight Crew

Transcript

#166 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - The Midnight Crew · Wrongful Conviction

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