Feb 14, 2007 4:27 pm US/Central
Daley Added As Defendant In Police Torture Suit
CHICAGO (AP) ―
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Mayor Richard M. Daley in December announcing his bid for reelection. (File)
CBS
Mayor Richard M. Daley was added Wednesday as a defendant in a civil suit alleging that city officials have conspired for 25 years to cover up the torture of suspects by Chicago police.
Former Mayor Jane M. Byrne was also added to the lawsuit filed on behalf of Darrell Cannon, who claims he was tortured into confessing to a murder he didn't commit.
"The mayor has done nothing about a pattern of torture -- a shameful episode in the history of this city," Cannon attorney G. Flint Taylor said during a news conference at which he announced the fresh complaint naming Daley.
Attorneys said the timing of the complaint had nothing to do with the Feb. 27 election in which Daley is seeking re-election.
The suit is one of five pending in U.S. District Court accusing police of covering up systematic torture of murder suspects at the South Side's Area 2 violent crimes unit decades ago.
Until now, the chief defendant in all the suits has been Lt. Jon Burge, the unit commander, who was fired in 1993 by the police department after it was determined that murder suspect Andrew Wilson was mistreated.
Daley said Wednesday he wasn't aware of being added as a defendant, but wasn't surprised.
"Mayors get sued every day," he said.
Byrne said in a brief telephone interview that allegations she knew anything about police torture were "just not true."
"I've read and listened to what people had to say but I knew nothing about it," she said. About Burge, she said: "I'm not even sure he did all those things."
Two special prosecutors spent four years investigating the allegations and reported last July that police beat, kicked, shocked or otherwise tortured scores of black suspects in the 1970s and 1980s, under Burge's watch, to try to extract confessions from them. But they said the cases were too old to prosecute.
A report issued by the prosecutors did not blame Daley, who was state's attorney -- Cook County's chief prosecutor -- at the time.
In the Cannon lawsuit and the four others now pending, attorneys argue that a conspiracy to cover up torture is ongoing.
The newly filed complaint alleges that Daley, Byrne and top police officials were aware of "the pattern and practice of torture and abuse at Area 2, the cover-up of that abuse and the wrongful prosecutions and convictions which resulted therefrom."
It says that Daley, Byrne and police officials "failed to intervene to stop defendant Burge and his Area 2 coconspirators from continuing their coercive interrogations and torture tactics."
Cannon's attorneys say he confessed to a murder he didn't commit only after he was taken to a remote area on the far South Side where police put a shotgun in his mouth and shocked him with an electric cattle prod.
(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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