WEBVTT - #360 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - Midnight Crew 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:08.520 Hey, it's Laura and I writer. In twenty twenty, we 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:12.800 brought you the truly horrifying story of John Burge, the 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:16.880 now disgraced Chicago police officer who oversaw a group of 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:20.639 white cops who turned their investigation room into a torture 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:24.759 chamber for black men. They called themselves the Midnight Crew. 0:00:25.440 --> 0:00:28.160 Now there's nothing anyone can do to fully right the 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:31.200 wrongs done by John Burge, but the city of Chicago 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:35.360 is making remarkable efforts to ameliorate the damage. To date, 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:38.960 dozens of John Burge's victims have had their sentences overturned, 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:42.480 and in twenty fifteen, the city passed a reparations bill 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:46.440 that will compensate the victims and their families. Now, part 0:00:46.479 --> 0:00:49.200 of that reparations package was meant to include a physical 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:52.440 memorial to the victims and to the torture they survived. 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:55.120 The idea was that it would serve as an enduring 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:58.880 public acknowledgment of the crimes against humanity that took place 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:03.080 in Chicago. Like war memorials, it would call on future 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:05.960 generations to remember what happened and to stand up to 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:09.520 similar abuses in the future. But here's the thing that 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:12.720 promise has yet to be fulfilled. The reparations bill has 0:01:12.760 --> 0:01:16.319 been passed and a design for the memorial has been approved, 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:20.080 but city aldermen and the Mayor's office have not allocated 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:23.840 the funds for construction. It's estimated that the memorial will 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:27.640 cost two point twenty five million dollars, which may sound 0:01:27.640 --> 0:01:30.080 like a lot of money until you learn that over 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:33.080 the years, the city has spent more than thirty seven 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:37.520 million dollars defending John Burge in court. It's time to 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:40.240 build this memorial. As the old saying goes, those who 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:43.640 forget history are doomed to repeat it, and no one 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:46.520 should suffer the abuses of the Midnight Crew ever again. 0:01:54.720 --> 0:01:58.120 Welcome to wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer. 0:01:58.200 --> 0:01:59.360 And I'm Steve Dressing. 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:04.680 You know, we've talked a lot during our podcast about 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:08.600 psychological interrogation techniques, but this is a really different case. 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:11.760 This is physical torture. It's the kind of thing most 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:15.360 people think doesn't happen in the United States, but it did. 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:20.280 And it did in my lifetime in Chicago. This was real. 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:23.520 I said, how can this be going on? You know, 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:26.799 at the end of the twentieth century. I mean This 0:02:26.880 --> 0:02:30.639 is medieval, This is the stuff of the Spanish Inquisition. 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:37.639 Because by and large, by the nineteen fifties, these kinds 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:41.920 of third degree tactics were no longer part of law enforcement. 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:44.560 You know, Steeve, I never knew what the term third 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:47.080 degree meant before I went to law school. So for 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:51.040 our audience, it means physical abuse during interrogations, right. 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:51.760 You know. 0:02:52.800 --> 0:02:57.760 Chicago's history with police interrogations is a fascinating one. The 0:02:57.800 --> 0:03:02.119 third degree thrived in Chicago and thirties, forties and fifties. 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:07.200 Then a group of police reformers brought in psychological interrogation 0:03:07.320 --> 0:03:12.160 techniques that they believed would be less likely to lead 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:17.480 to false confessions. But in Chicago, old habits die hard. 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:21.280 It's easy for anyone to understand why someone would falsely 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:24.880 confess if they're being physically abused or tortured. That's no 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:32.079 way to get the truth, let alone justice. Today's story 0:03:32.120 --> 0:03:35.600 starts on July twenty seventh, nineteen eighty eight. It's summer 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:38.760 in Chicago, one of the hottest on record, with temperatures 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:43.120 topping one hundred degrees. On the city's predominantly black South Side, 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:46.080 a lot of homes are older run down, don't have 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:50.600 air conditioning. Economic opportunities are thin, and people sweat just 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:53.960 to pay the bills. So when the temperature climbs, tempers 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:57.120 run high too. That's true for the residents and for 0:03:57.200 --> 0:04:01.280 the police. On July twenty seven, though, things get way 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:04.840 too hot in a Southside neighborhood called Gage Park. In 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:07.520 the middle of the night, a brick bungalow goes up 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:11.440 in flames. After firefighters bring the blaze under control, police 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:15.320 go inside. They find five bodies, two women who had 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:18.120 worked as teacher's aids at a local school, and three 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:21.640 young children. All of the kids had been smothered with pillows. 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:24.839 One of the women had been beaten and strangled. The 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:27.599 other woman had been smothered too. She was the daughter 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:31.440 of a Chicago cop. It's a horrible crime, and the 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:35.520 case quickly becomes high profile. What Chicago police call a heater. 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:39.640 But there's no eyewitnesses, no forensic evidence, no nothing. So 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:44.120 police offer a two thousand dollars reward for information. Sure Enough, 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:47.239 just a few days later, a prison inmate calls police 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:51.320 and claims that his friend, Ronald Kitchen, confessed to him 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:55.200 over the phone. Now prison phone calls are recorded and monitored. 0:04:55.520 --> 0:04:58.279 A quick check of the inmate's phone recordings reveals he 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:00.960 was lying. No one he spoke with had ever confessed 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:04.839 to anything, but with no other leads, the police decide 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:07.960 to go after Ronald' kitchen, and they go after him hard. 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:11.600 In nineteen eighty eight, Ronald was twenty two years old, 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:14.520 and as he admits today, he was no angel back then. 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:17.279 With one young child and a second on the way, 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:20.080 he made a living by selling cocaine, but he was 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:22.839 no killer and never had been. On the evening of 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:25.599 August twenty fifth, Ronald leaves his house and heads for 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:28.120 the corner store down the block. He's out to buy 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:30.440 a gallon of milk and some cookie dough for his 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:34.160 two year old son. Before he knows it, Ronald surrounded 0:05:34.160 --> 0:05:37.160 by police cars. One of the officers says something about 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:40.719 a stolen vehicle. Another cop points a gun at him. 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:43.560 Ronald knows he had nothing to do with any car theft, 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:45.680 so he figures he'll be able to clear up the 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:50.000 situation without much difficulty. As the police put Ronald in handcuffs, 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:52.839 he hollers to his family down the block, I'll be 0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:56.080 back in forty five minutes. Police bring Ronald to a 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:59.720 south side station called Area three. They throw him into 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:02.760 an interrogation room and cuff his hands to an iron 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:05.760 ring in the wall, and the account Ronald gives of 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:10.040 the next sixteen hours is harrowing. According to Ronald, an 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:12.800 officer comes in and asks who have you been talking to? 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:16.360 When Ronald doesn't know how to answer, the officer starts 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:20.040 punching him in the chest and kicking his stomach. Over 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:22.880 the next several hours, that officer would leave, then come 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:26.200 back again over and over to ask the same question, 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:29.640 who have you been talking to? And to continue the beatings. 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:32.960 Sometimes he'd be joined by a second officer. When that 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:35.839 officer entered the room, he would remove his name tag 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:40.719 before joining the assaults. After hours of beatings, a third 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:44.360 officer came into the room alone. He asked if Ronald 0:06:44.400 --> 0:06:47.480 was okay and if he wanted anything to eat. When 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:50.600 Ronald asked to call a lawyer, he says, the officer smiled, 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:54.560 picked up the handset from a nearby phone, and smashed 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:57.359 it into Ronald's skull. Do you hear ringing? 0:06:57.400 --> 0:06:57.640 Now? 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:01.280 Said the officer. On his way out, He turned off 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:05.640 the lights, leaving Ronald in the dark for hours. The 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:09.159 beatings continued, with Ronald waiting in agony for the next 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:12.160 round to start. The officers focused on areas of his 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:15.640 body where damage wouldn't be visible. At one point, officers 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:18.600 cuffed both his hands behind his back and used their 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:22.160 nightsticks to beat his genitals. But their desire to cover 0:07:22.200 --> 0:07:25.360 their tracks didn't stop the police from targeting Ronald's head too. 0:07:25.840 --> 0:07:27.880 They just used a phone book to cushion the blows 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:29.080 and avoid leaving a mark. 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:34.000 This torture session was clearly premeditated, mapped out in advance. 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:38.520 The whole time. They were also calling Ronald racial slurs. 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:42.480 The N word just rolled off their tongues. The goal 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:46.600 here was total humiliation, physical and mental. 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:51.520 Hours of torture went by until Ronald finally broke. He 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:55.840 signed a false confession dictated by the police, admitting to 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:59.800 the Gage Park killings. Based on that confession, Ronald Kitchen 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:02.880 was charged with capital murder, meaning that he was facing 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:06.520 the death penalty. At his first court appearance, Ronald told 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:09.120 the judge that he'd been tortured. A few days later, 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:13.280 Ronald was transferred to a hospital for treatment. At the hospital, 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:17.800 his urine ran red with blood. Despite all of this, 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:21.560 Ronald's false confession was allowed into evidence against him at trial, 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:25.320 along with the testimony of that prison snitch who still 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:29.360 claimed that Ronald had admitted the killings. On September nineteenth, 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:33.600 nineteen ninety, Ronald Kitchen was convicted of five counts of 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:37.600 murder and sent to death row. There, he'd soon discovered 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:41.400 he wasn't alone. At least nine other residents of Illinois's 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:45.240 death Row had been tortured into confessing too. There was 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:46.920 something much bigger going on. 0:08:55.200 --> 0:08:59.319 This episode is sponsored by AIG, a leading global insurance company, 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:03.319 and Paul Weiss Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison, a leading international 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:06.920 law firm. The AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:11.800 services and other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:14.880 most in need, and recently they announced that working to 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:17.640 reform the criminal justice system will become a key pillar 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:21.199 of the program's mission. Paul Weiss has long had an 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:25.480 unwavering commitment to providing impactful, pro bono legal assistance to 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:28.559 the most vulnerable members of our society and in support 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:32.240 of the public interest, including extensive work in the criminal 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:32.960 justice area. 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:41.920 What Ronald endured at Area three was no isolated incident. 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:45.760 Ronald Kitchen had encountered a group of white cops who 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:50.319 called themselves the Midnight Crew. The Midnight Crew closed cases 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:54.440 by torturing black men until they confessed, and they operated 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:58.959 under the authority of a Chicago police detective named John Burge. 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:01.840 To understand and what happened to Ronald, you have to 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:06.760 start asking some tough questions. What kind of police officer 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:11.440 would do this to another human being? What kind of 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:16.720 person would knowingly break the laws of common decency, the 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:19.880 laws of humanity just to get a confession. 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:23.160 When it comes to John Burge, the answer is complex. 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:27.880 Here's our friend John Conroy, the journalist who is investigative reporting, 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:29.640 exposed the Midnight Crew. 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:34.200 John Burge was a very driven police officer. Initially he 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:36.520 was a patrol officer, and then he was promoted to 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:38.840 the detective, and then he made sergeant, and then he 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:43.720 made lieutenant. He seemed to me like somebody who would 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:47.160 show up at my family's picnic and if my elderly 0:10:47.320 --> 0:10:51.440 aunt had a problem starting her car on the way home, 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:53.679 he would have been the first woman out there trying 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:56.040 to get it working. That just seemed to me to 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:58.439 be the kind of guy he was on the other hand, 0:10:58.800 --> 0:11:01.400 he brutally tortured people. 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:05.480 John Burge was a Chicago Southsider born in nineteen forty 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:08.920 seven who grew up in a white enclave called South Deering. 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:13.400 He grew up in a working class, white neighborhood on 0:11:13.440 --> 0:11:18.040 the South Side of Chicago that, during the late nineteen sixties, 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:21.720 went from white to black over the course of about 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:25.079 four years, and his family was among the. 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:30.080 Last to move out. He then went off to college, 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:35.479 flunked out after about a semester, went home and enlisted 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:36.840 in the military. 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:40.440 Burg served as a military police officer in South Korea 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:43.480 and Vietnam. For his service, he earned the Bronze Star 0:11:43.640 --> 0:11:47.160 Medal and Purple Heart. After he returned to Chicago, Burge 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:49.800 joined the police force and racked up more than a 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:51.319 dozen commendations. 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:57.320 Everyone wants torturers to be Hannibal elector or somebody like 0:11:57.360 --> 0:12:01.080 that out of sounds of the lamps. Everyone tortures to 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:04.959 be monsters, and they're basically normal people like you and me. 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:09.880 Burnch for instance, once saved the woman, an African American woman, 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:13.800 from committing suicide. She had a gun to her throat, 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:17.080 She pulled the trigger and he got his thumb in 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:19.280 the firing mechanism and it didn't go off. 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:23.800 But his apparent heroism wasn't the full story, because John 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:27.199 Burge and his underlings ended up being accused of extracting 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:31.640 confessions from more than two hundred black men between nineteen 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:34.760 seventy two and nineteen ninety one using torture. 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:39.320 You know, in Chicago, the cops were under tremendous pressure 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:43.959 because we had an astronomical homicide People talk about homicides 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:49.080 in Chicago now, they were eighty percent higher in the 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:54.400 early nineties, and so you know, they had to soft crimes. 0:12:54.440 --> 0:12:58.440 They were getting information. That's another reason why people do it. 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:02.280 They actually might think that they're helping out the good 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:07.360 people of the community by torturing the bad ones. You 0:13:07.440 --> 0:13:10.560 do get information when you torture people, you just don't 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:14.400 get accurate information. People will say anything to stop the torture. 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:17.920 Accusations against the Midnight Crew started emerging. Just a few 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:21.760 months before Ronald Kitchen was convicted. In January nineteen ninety, 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:25.360 John Conroy published an investigative report in The Chicago Reader 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:27.600 entitled House of Screams. 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:30.040 The bird story came to me because I was writing 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:34.200 a book on torture, but not torturers, and countries that 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:38.600 people normally suspected of torture, and democracies. And then a 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:40.360 friend of mine called me and said, there's this guy 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:43.400 named Andrew Wilson. He claims he was given electric shock 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:48.280 by the Chicago police, and his testimony was just so 0:13:48.440 --> 0:13:53.320 compelling the police could not explain away his injuries. 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:55.960 Andrew Wilson was a suspect in the murder of two 0:13:56.040 --> 0:13:59.040 Chicago cops. A house of screams told the story of 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:02.160 what happened to him in police custody. The rumor was 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:06.000 that during Wilson's interrogation, Burge and his men used techniques 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:10.000 that Burge learned as a military police officer back in Vietnam. 0:14:10.320 --> 0:14:13.480 Andrew Wilson emerged from the police station with these very 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:16.360 peculiar marks on his ears and his nose in the 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:20.120 shape of alligator clips. They were scabs, and he had 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:23.080 parallel burns on his chest and a big burn on 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:26.120 his thigh. He said he'd been held against a hot 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:30.120 radiator while electric shock was administered by a hand crank 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:34.360 device not dissimilar from a field telephone used in Vietnam. 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:38.320 And because he'd shot dead two caps, nobody wanted to 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:38.920 believe him. 0:14:39.360 --> 0:14:43.600 Nobody's going to have any sympathy for cop killers, and 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:46.720 Burge and his Midnight crew knew that they would be 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:50.520 more likely to get away with torturing a cop killer 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:51.560 than anybody else. 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:59.640 You know, frankly, when we get in an uproar about torture, 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:03.680 it's over the torture of people we like, somebody like 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:09.240 say Nelson Mandela, and we are outraged. But if you 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:13.120 torture somebody whom we don't like, oh that's no problem 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:16.600 at all. So, you know, I think the true test 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:19.720 of a society is can you stand up and defend 0:15:19.760 --> 0:15:21.720 the rights of people whom you abhor. 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:30.640 During Andrew Wilson's trial, his attorneys started receiving letters in 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:36.440 Chicago police envelopes from an inside whistleblower. The department's torture problem, 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:39.280 it seemed, went much further than Andrew Wilson. 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:44.280 The letters provided a roadmap for anybody who wanted to investigate, 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:47.880 because they listed the people who went along with the torture, 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:52.640 and then it listed also the weak links, people who 0:15:52.680 --> 0:15:56.560 didn't like Birch. They wouldn't be asked to participate in 0:15:56.600 --> 0:16:01.280 the torture, but they would have been around a police 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:02.640 station would have known about it. 0:16:03.200 --> 0:16:06.960 After Conroy's story about Andrew Wilson ran an avalanche of 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:10.320 other allegations came forward. There were men who had plastic 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:13.560 bags put over their heads, men who were waterboarded with 0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:17.760 seven up, men who'd had their testicles stood on during interrogation. 0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:22.120 All black men tortured by all white cops. 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:24.680 Of course, I think race was a factor in all 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:28.440 of this. A lot of the abuse that was inflicted 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:32.040 was not just physical, but it was saw verbal, and 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:34.240 it was regular use of the N word. 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:37.680 The stories were horribly similar, and the evidence was there 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:41.520 from the beginning. One torture victim, Aaron Patterson, managed to 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:44.560 leave a visible cry for help in the interrogation room. 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:48.320 I just picture this. This guy is being tortured and 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:51.680 he's scratching this message in a metal bench with a 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:56.360 paper clip, and the message couldn't be clearer. Please threaten 0:16:56.480 --> 0:17:00.840 me with violence, slapped and suffocated me with plastics. No 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:06.439 lawyer or dad signed false statement to murder. Why did 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:09.200 he do this? He did it because he was afraid 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:12.399 he wouldn't survive the torture, and that even if he 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:16.760 did survive, he was afraid that no one would believe him. 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:20.000 Aaron did survive, and one of the other survivors was 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:20.960 Ronald Kitchen. 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:24.919 Ronald later realized that the second officer who participated in 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:28.200 his interrogation, the one who took off his name tag 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:32.159 before beating him, well, that was no ordinary member of 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:35.959 the Midnight Crew. That was John Burge himself. 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:41.080 By the time John Conroy published House of Screams, John 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:44.000 Burge and the Midnight Crews torture campaign had been going 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:48.159 on for nearly twenty years. Meanwhile, Burge had been promoted 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:51.920 to commander, outranking ninety nine percent of the other officers 0:17:51.960 --> 0:17:53.280 on the Chicago Police force. 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:57.640 So my article came out in January nineteen ninety. As 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:03.119 we were approaching press time, I was really uneasy. I thought, 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:06.439 Oh Jesus, you know we're going to go with a 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:10.640 story that says that the Chicago police engaged in torture. 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:15.320 Nobody had said anything of the kind before. I thought 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:18.920 there would be a furre and we might ensue, even 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:21.800 though we had done every legal check that could be done. 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:25.400 Burge was a powerful man, but the allegations against him 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:29.159 were too numerous and too similar to ignore. In nineteen 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:32.920 ninety one, John Burge was suspended from the Chicago Police force. 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:36.679 The local police union rushed to Burges's defense, throwing him 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:38.440 a fundraiser at a union hall. 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:42.560 I was there. It was packed with more than a 0:18:42.640 --> 0:18:46.920 thousand people, probably most of them cops, but I'm sure 0:18:46.960 --> 0:18:50.000 some of them were states attorneys, because I know that 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:52.640 it was advertised in the State's Attorney's office. 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:57.399 Meanwhile, more and more allegations of police torture were coming forward, beatings, 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:01.679 cattle prods, Russian roulette, Coggo. Police board held a hearing 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:04.480 in nineteen ninety two into Burges's alleged misconduct. 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:08.199 Basically, it was an employment fitness hearing. It was not 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:13.439 a criminal case, and the city had attorneys present the 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:17.200 case against Birch and they did a pretty darn good job. 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:21.240 I thought they actually sold the police Board on the 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:24.000 idea that something had indeed happened here. 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:27.520 During the hearing, an internal police report came to light. 0:19:28.240 --> 0:19:31.840 It suggested that police supervisors had known about the midnight 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:36.800 cruise systemic brutality for years. In nineteen ninety three, the 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:40.640 police board found that John Burge had participated in physical 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:44.360 abuse and fired him from the Chicago Police now. 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:48.360 The Police Board's decision was remarkable in that it never 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:52.160 used the word torture. It said, John Birge did kick 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:55.200 and or punch and or deny medical attention to and 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:59.000 or and or and or you couldn't tell, Oh, what 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:03.080 exactly do you think happened? So as a result of 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:06.119 that decision, Burgs got fired, but he was allowed to 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:07.400 retire with his pension. 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:11.720 Another agency, the Office of Professional Standards, began investigating too, 0:20:12.200 --> 0:20:14.679 and it released a report that went a step further. 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:18.560 The investigation found that Chicago police had taken part in 0:20:18.600 --> 0:20:24.280 a systematic, planned torture campaign that command officers knew about. Meanwhile, 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:27.280 Ronald Kitchen, one of the victims of that torture, was 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:29.919 still on death row for a crime he didn't commit. 0:20:30.400 --> 0:20:33.080 And remember, he was there along with other men who'd 0:20:33.080 --> 0:20:35.919 been tortured just like him by John Burge and the 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:40.040 Midnight Crew. For years, Ronald's appeals failed, and the system 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:42.840 turned a blind eye to the unthinkable abuse he suffered. 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:46.440 But Ronald and the others on death row didn't stay silent. 0:20:46.920 --> 0:20:50.480 The group began finding their voices, speaking out about the 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:53.680 fact that the Midnight Crew had tortured innocent people. Into 0:20:53.720 --> 0:20:54.600 falsely confessing. 0:20:55.200 --> 0:20:59.119 What's amazing to me is how these men found their voice. 0:20:59.720 --> 0:21:04.480 They did so by re enacting each other's trials. You 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:08.120 have to remember that when people are in prison, every 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:11.919 instinct tells you not to talk to other inmates about 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:16.240 your case. But these men, they acted out their case. 0:21:16.320 --> 0:21:20.600 They played the role of prosecutor of defense, attorney, of 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:25.959 police witness, and in some cases they convicted one another. 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:30.960 That process gave them agency, and at the end of 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:35.919 the day, all of these men became great storytellers. They 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:38.399 could not only tell the story of what happened to 0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:41.960 each of them, but they could tell the stories of 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:42.560 each other. 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:48.200 As the Midnight Crew torture scandal blew up, Ronald's personal 0:21:48.280 --> 0:21:51.560 fight for justice became unignorable. In two thousand and one, 0:21:51.760 --> 0:21:54.640 Ronald got a new team of post conviction lawyers. They 0:21:54.680 --> 0:21:58.800 discovered previously undisclosed evidence about that prison sniche who claimed 0:21:58.840 --> 0:22:02.399 Ronald had confessed. Turns out the snitch had received money 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:06.399 an early release from prison in exchange for his false testimony. 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:10.880 That evidence, plus the discovery of the Midnight Crew torture scandal, 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:15.040 led prosecutors to agree that Ronald's conviction should be thrown out. 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:18.720 On July seventh, two thousand and nine, Ronald Kitchen became 0:22:18.760 --> 0:22:22.560 a free, exonerated man. Six weeks later, he was awarded 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:37.919 a certificate of innocence. Those forty five minutes that Ronald 0:22:38.000 --> 0:22:40.919 had expected to be gone they turned into twenty one 0:22:41.119 --> 0:22:45.680 years behind bars. The Gage part killings have never been solved. 0:22:46.280 --> 0:22:48.440 As for the other men on death row with Ronald, 0:22:48.800 --> 0:22:52.200 over the years, several of them walked free, to those 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:55.360 who remained in prison had their sentences commuted to life, 0:22:55.520 --> 0:22:58.640 and their continuing to fight their cases. And what about 0:22:58.680 --> 0:23:01.560 John Birge. Well, as we told you, he got kicked 0:23:01.600 --> 0:23:04.840 off the Chicago Police Force. But neither John Burge nor 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:07.920 any member of the Midnight Crew was ever charged with 0:23:08.320 --> 0:23:11.919 or convicted of any act of torture because the statute 0:23:11.920 --> 0:23:14.600 of limitations had passed by the time the truth came 0:23:14.640 --> 0:23:17.399 to light. Maybe we can find some small measure of 0:23:17.560 --> 0:23:20.159 justice though, in the fact that John Birge did go 0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:25.320 to prison for lying about torture. In twenty ten, Burge 0:23:25.359 --> 0:23:28.720 was sued by someone he'd tortured. During the lawsuit, Burge 0:23:28.720 --> 0:23:32.080 gave a sworn statement denying that any abuse had occurred 0:23:32.080 --> 0:23:36.240 on his watch. That falsehood was enough to convict Burge 0:23:36.240 --> 0:23:40.520 of perjury. John Burge served from twenty eleven to twenty 0:23:40.600 --> 0:23:43.880 fourteen in federal prison, a much shorter length of time 0:23:43.960 --> 0:23:47.119 than many of his victims spent behind bars. After he 0:23:47.240 --> 0:23:51.000 left prison, Burge gave an interview calling the torture victim's 0:23:51.160 --> 0:23:55.160 human vermin. He took up residence in Florida, still collecting 0:23:55.160 --> 0:23:59.080 his police pension four thousand dollars a month. He even 0:23:59.160 --> 0:24:01.159 drove a boat called Vigilante. 0:24:01.560 --> 0:24:04.040 Well, no justice was not served in this case. I 0:24:04.040 --> 0:24:06.080 mean he was sentenced to four years in prison. He 0:24:06.119 --> 0:24:11.160 didn't serve that long. Birge was convicted thirty seven years 0:24:11.400 --> 0:24:15.080 after the first time. We know that he used electric shock. 0:24:15.840 --> 0:24:18.640 You know, at the end of the day, John Burge 0:24:18.680 --> 0:24:21.959 was released after only serving a few years in prison, 0:24:22.359 --> 0:24:25.639 while Ronald and the other men on death row spent 0:24:25.920 --> 0:24:29.520 decades in some of the harshest prisons in Illinois system. 0:24:30.080 --> 0:24:31.440 That's not justice. 0:24:31.880 --> 0:24:35.120 In twenty eighteen, John Burge died at his home in Florida. 0:24:35.800 --> 0:24:38.880 After his death, the police union posted a statement on 0:24:38.960 --> 0:24:42.199 Facebook saying that the Fraternal Order of Police does not 0:24:42.320 --> 0:24:44.840 believe the full story about the Birge case has ever 0:24:44.880 --> 0:24:49.800 been told They're probably right. Decades after Burge's reign of terror, 0:24:50.080 --> 0:24:53.200