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