WEBVTT - #166 Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions - The Midnight Crew 0:00:02.759 --> 0:00:06.160 Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer. 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:07.400 And I'm Steve Drewson. 0:00:08.280 --> 0:00:10.039 Today we're going to tell you about one of the 0:00:10.080 --> 0:00:14.240 worst police abuse scandals in US history. For decades, on 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:17.079 the South side of Chicago, a group of white cops 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:20.599 turned the interrogation room into a torture chamber for black men. 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:25.440 Those cops called themselves the Midnight Crew. We'll start by 0:00:25.440 --> 0:00:28.520 introducing you to one innocent man who encountered the Midnight 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:32.280 Crew and ended up confessing to murder. Eventually, it became 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:35.000 all too clear that what happened to him had happened 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:37.960 to hundreds of others too. Let's talk about how the 0:00:38.000 --> 0:00:41.400 Midnight Crew got exposed to daylight, and what's being done 0:00:41.440 --> 0:00:43.960 to make sure this kind of police torture doesn't ever 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:57.080 happen again. You know, we've talked a lot during our 0:00:57.080 --> 0:01:00.880 podcast about psychological interrogation techniques, but this is a really 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:04.080 different case. This is physical torture. It's the kind of 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:07.160 thing most people think doesn't happen in the United States, 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:09.279 but it did, and it. 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:14.600 Did in my lifetime in Chicago. This was real. I said, 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:16.960 how can this be going on? You know, at the 0:01:17.120 --> 0:01:20.760 end of the twentieth century. I mean, this is medieval, 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:25.240 This is the stuff of the Spanish Inquisition, because by 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:31.279 and large, by the nineteen fifties, these kinds of third 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:35.039 degree tactics were no longer part of law enforcement. 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:37.640 You know, Steve, I never knew what the term third 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:40.160 degree meant before I went to law school. So for 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:44.119 our audience, it means physical abuse during interrogations, right. 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:50.120 You know. Chicago's history with police interrogations is a fascinating one. 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.360 The third degree thrived in Chicago in the thirties, forties 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:58.600 and fifties than a group of police reformers brought in 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:03.880 psychological enterigoce ation techniques that they believed would be less 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:09.400 likely to lead to false confessions. But in Chicago, old 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:10.560 habits die hard. 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:14.360 It's easy for anyone to understand why someone would falsely 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:17.960 confess if they're being physically abused or tortured. That's no 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:25.160 way to get the truth, let alone justice. Today's story 0:02:25.200 --> 0:02:28.680 starts on July twenty seventh, nineteen eighty eight. It's summer 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:31.840 in Chicago, one of the hottest on record, with temperatures 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:36.120 topping one hundred degrees on the city's predominantly black south Side. 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:36.799 A lot of. 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:40.920 Homes are older, run down, don't have air conditioning. Economic 0:02:40.960 --> 0:02:44.440 opportunities are thin, and people sweat just to pay the bills. 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:48.480 So when the temperature climbs, tempers run high too. That's 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:52.600 true for the residents and for the police. On July 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:55.320 twenty seventh, though, things get way too hot in a 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:58.880 Southside neighborhood called Gage Park. In the middle of the night, 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:02.919 a brick bungalow goes up in flames. After firefighters bring 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:07.000 the blaze under control, police go inside. They find five bodies, 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:09.640 two women who had worked as teacher's aids at a 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:13.320 local school, and three young children. All of the kids 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:16.000 had been smothered with pillows. One of the women had 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:19.320 been beaten and strangled. The other woman had been smothered too. 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:23.320 She was the daughter of a Chicago cop. It's a 0:03:23.360 --> 0:03:26.720 horrible crime, and the case quickly becomes high profile what 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:30.760 Chicago police call a heater. But there's no eyewitnesses, no 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:34.480 forensic evidence, no nothing. So police offer a two thousand 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:38.360 dollars reward for information. Sure Enough, just a few days later, 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:42.040 a prison inmate calls police and claims that his friend, 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:46.360 Ronald Kitchen, confessed to him over the phone. Now, prison 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:49.320 phone calls are recorded and monitored. A quick check of 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:52.640 the inmate's phone recordings reveals he was lying. No one 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:55.440 he spoke with had ever confessed to anything, but with 0:03:55.600 --> 0:03:59.480 no other leads, the police decide to go after Ronald Kitchen, 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:03.040 and they go after him hard. In nineteen eighty eight, 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:06.240 Ronald was twenty two years old, and as he admits today, 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:09.280 he was no angel. Back then. With one young child 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:11.320 and a second on the way, he made a living 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:14.200 by selling cocaine, but he was no killer and never 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:17.240 had been. On the evening of August twenty fifth, Ronald 0:04:17.320 --> 0:04:19.680 leaves his house and heads for the corner store down 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:22.080 the block. He's out to buy a gallon of milk 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:24.640 and some cookie dough for his two year old son. 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:28.880 Before he knows it, Ronald surrounded by police cars. One 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:32.040 of the officers says something about a stolen vehicle. Another 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:35.040 cop points a gun at him. Ronald knows he had 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:37.719 nothing to do with any car theft, so he figures 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:40.560 he'll be able to clear up the situation without much difficulty. 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:44.080 As the police put Ronald in handcuffs, he hollers to 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:46.640 his family down the block, I'll be back in forty 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:50.120 five minutes. Police bring Ronald to a south Side station 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:53.960 called Area three. They throw him into an interrogation room 0:04:54.040 --> 0:04:56.760 and cuff his hands to an iron ring in the wall, 0:04:57.320 --> 0:04:59.920 and the account Ronald gives of the next sixteen hours 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:04.160 is harrowing. According to Ronald, an officer comes in and 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.400 asks who have you been talking to? When Ronald doesn't 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:10.279 know how to answer, the officer starts punching him in 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:14.359 the chest and kicking his stomach. Over the next several hours, 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:17.360 that officer would leave, then come back again, over and 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:20.240 over to ask the same question, who have you been 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:24.080 talking to? And to continue the beatings. Sometimes he'd be 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:27.159 joined by a second officer. When that officer entered the room, 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:30.720 he would remove his name tag before joining the assaults. 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:34.720 After hours of beatings, a third officer came into the 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:38.600 room alone. He asked if Ronald was okay and if 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:41.520 he wanted anything to eat. When Ronald asked to call 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:44.680 a lawyer, he says, the officer smiled, picked up the 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:49.000 handset from a nearby phone, and smashed it into Ronald's skull. 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:50.440 Do you hear ringing? 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:50.760 Now? 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:54.360 Said the officer? On his way out, he turned off 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:58.719 the lights, leaving Ronald in the dark for hours. The 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:02.240 beatings continued, with Ronald waiting in agony for the next 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:05.240 round to start. The officers focused on areas of his 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:08.760 body where damage wouldn't be visible. At one point, officers 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:11.680 cuffed both his hands behind his back and used their 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:15.240 nightsticks to beat his genitals. But their desire to cover 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:18.440 their tracks didn't stop the police from targeting Ronald's head too. 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:20.960 They just used a phone book to cushion the blows 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:22.160 and avoid leaving a mark. 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:27.120 This torture session was clearly premeditated, mapped out in advance. 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:31.640 The whole time. They were also calling Ronald racial slurs. 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:35.560 The N word just rolled off their tongues. The goal 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:39.680 here was total humiliation, physical and mental. 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:44.599 Hours of torture went by until Ronald finally broke. He 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:48.919 signed a false confession dictated by the police, admitting to 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:52.960 the Gage Park killings. Based on that confession, Ronald Kitchen 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:55.960 was charged with capital murder, meaning that he was facing 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:59.559 the death penalty. At his first court appearance, Ronald told 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:02.160 the judge that he'd been tortured. A few days later, 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:06.360 Ronald was transferred to a hospital for treatment. At the hospital, 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:10.880 his urine ran red with blood. Despite all of this, 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:14.640 Ronald's false confession was allowed into evidence against him at trial, 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:18.440 along with the testimony of that prison snitch who still 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:22.440 claimed that Ronald had admitted the killings. On September nineteenth, 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:26.680 nineteen ninety, Ronald Kitchen was convicted of five counts of 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:30.720 murder and sent to death row. There, he'd soon discovered 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:34.480 he wasn't alone. At least nine other residents of Illinois's 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:38.320 death Row had been tortured into confessing too. There was 0:07:38.360 --> 0:07:40.000 something much bigger going on. 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:52.080 This episode is sponsored by AIG, a leading global insurance company, 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:56.080 and Paul Weiss Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison, a leading international 0:07:56.160 --> 0:07:59.600 law firm. The AIG pro Bono program provides free legal 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:04.560 service and other support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:07.640 most in need, and recently they announced that working to 0:08:07.680 --> 0:08:10.400 reform the criminal justice system will become a key pillar 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:13.960 of the program's mission. Paul Weiss has long had an 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:18.240 unwavering commitment to providing impactful, pro bono legal assistance to 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:21.320 the most vulnerable members of our society and in support 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:25.000 of the public interest, including extensive work in the criminal 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:27.480 justice area. 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:34.319 What Ronald endured at Area three was no isolated incident. 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:38.200 Ronald Kitchen had encountered a group of white cops who 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:42.720 called themselves the Midnight Crew. The Midnight Crew closed cases 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:46.880 by torturing black men until they confessed, and they operated 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:51.359 under the authority of a Chicago police detective named John Burge. 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:54.520 To understand what happened to Ronald, you have to start 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:59.720 asking some tough questions. What kind of police officer would 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:04.480 do this to another human being? What kind of person 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:09.520 would knowingly break the laws of common decency, the laws 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:12.359 of humanity just to get a confession. 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:15.559 When it comes to John Burge, the answer is complex. 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:19.760 Here's our friend John Conroy, the journalist who was investigative 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:22.040 reporting exposed the Midnight Crew. 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:26.600 John Burge was a very driven police officer. Initially he 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:29.599 was a patrol officer, and then he was mooted to detective, 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:32.800 and then he made sergeant, and then he made lieutenant. 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:36.600 He seemed to me like somebody who would show up 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:40.360 at my family's picnic and if my elderly aunt had 0:09:40.400 --> 0:09:44.080 a problem starting her car on the way home, he 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:46.160 would have been the first woman out there trying to 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:48.559 get it working. That just seemed to me to be 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:50.880 the kind of guy he was. On the other hand, 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:53.800 he brutally tortured people. 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.920 John Burge was a Chicago Southsider born in nineteen forty 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:00.520 seven who grew up in a white en class called 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:01.320 South Deering. 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:05.800 He grew up in a working class, white neighborhood on 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:10.439 the South Side of Chicago that during the late nineteen sixties, 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:14.199 went from white to black over the course of about 0:10:14.240 --> 0:10:17.960 four years, and his family was among the last to 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:23.160 move out. He then went off to college, flunked out 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:29.239 after about a semester, went home and enlisted in the military. 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:32.880 Burg served as a military police officer in South Korea 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:35.920 and Vietnam. For his service, he earned the Bronze Star 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:39.520 Medal and Purple Heart. After he returned to Chicago, Burg 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:42.240 joined the police force and racked up more than a 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:43.720 dozen commendations. 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:49.720 Everyone wants torturers to be Hannibal elector or somebody like 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:53.400 that out of sounds of the ramps. Everyone wants torturers 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:56.920 to be monsters, and they're basically normal people like you 0:10:57.040 --> 0:11:01.199 and me. Burge, for instance, once saved the woman, an 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:05.079 African American woman, from committing suicide. She had a gun 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:08.560 to her throat, she pulled the trigger and he got 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:11.720 his thumb in the firing mechanism and it didn't go off. 0:11:12.120 --> 0:11:16.240 But his apparent heroism wasn't the full story, because John 0:11:16.320 --> 0:11:19.600 Burge and his underlings ended up being accused of extracting 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:24.080 confessions from more than two hundred black men between nineteen 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:27.200 seventy two and nineteen ninety one using torture. 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:31.760 You know, in Chicago, the cops were under tremendous pressure 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:35.800 because we had an astronomical homicide rate. People talk about 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:41.320 homicides in Chicago now, They were eighty percent higher in 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:45.880 the early nineties, and so, you know, they had to 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:50.160 solve crimes. They were getting information. That's another reason why 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:54.040 people do it. They actually might think that they're helping 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:58.400 out the good people of the community by torturing the 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:01.920 bad ones. You do get information when you torture people, 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:05.480 you just don't get accurate information. People will say anything 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:06.800 to stop the torture. 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:10.360 Accusations against the Midnight Crew started emerging just a few 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:14.200 months before Ronald Kitchen was convicted. In January nineteen ninety, 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:17.800 John Conroy published an investigative report in the Chicago Reader 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:20.040 entitled House of Screams. 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:22.480 The bird story came to me because I was writing 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:26.640 a book on torture but not torturers, and countries that 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:31.000 people normally suspected of torture, and democracies. And then a 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:32.800 friend of mine called me and said, there's this guy 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:35.840 named Andrew Wilson. He claims he was given electric shock 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:40.680 by the Chicago police, and his testimony was just so 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:45.760 compelling the police could not explain away his injuries. 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:48.400 Andrew Wilson was a suspect in the murder of two 0:12:48.480 --> 0:12:51.440 Chicago cops, and House of Screams told the story of 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:54.600 what happened to him in police custody. The rumor was 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:58.439 that during Wilson's interrogation, Burge and his men used techniques 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:01.560 that Burge learned as a military Harry police officer back 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:02.400 in Vietnam. 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:05.920 Andrew Wilson emerged from the police station with these very 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:08.800 peculiar marks on his ears and his nose in the 0:13:08.800 --> 0:13:12.560 shape of alligator clips. They were scabs, and he had 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:15.480 parallel burns on his chest and a big burn on 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:18.520 his thigh. He said he'd been held against a hot 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:23.080 radiator while electric shock was administered by a hand crank device, 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:27.600 not dissimilar from a field telephone used in Vietnam, and 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:31.360 because he'd shot dead two cops, nobody wanted to believe him. 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:36.000 Nobody's going to have any sympathy for cop killers, and 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:39.120 Burge and his Midnight crew knew that they would be 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:42.240 more likely to get away with torturing a cop killer 0:13:42.960 --> 0:13:43.959 than anybody else. 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:52.040 You know, frankly, when we get in an uproar about torture, 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:56.120 it's over the torture of people we like, somebody like 0:13:56.320 --> 0:14:01.640 say Nelson Mandela, and we are outraged. But if you 0:14:02.120 --> 0:14:05.520 torture somebody whom we don't like, oh, that's no problem 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:09.000 at all. So, you know, I think the true test 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:12.080 of a society is can you stand up and defend 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:14.120 the rights of people whom you abhor. 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:23.040 During Andrew Wilson's trial, his attorneys started receiving letters in 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:28.840 Chicago police envelopes from an inside whistleblower. The department's torture problem, 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:31.760 it seemed, went much further than Andrew Wilson. 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:36.720 The letters provided a roadmap for anybody who wanted to investigate, 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:40.280 because they listed the people who went along with the torture, 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:45.080 and then it listed also the weak links, people who 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:49.000 didn't like Birch. They wouldn't be asked to participate in 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:53.720 the torture, but they would have been around a police 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:55.080 station would have known about it. 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:59.360 After Conroy's story about Andrew Wilson ran an avalanche of 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:02.760 other allegation came forward. There were men who had plastic 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:06.000 bags put over their heads, men who were waterboarded with 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:10.200 seven up, men who'd had their testicles stood on during interrogation. 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:14.520 All black men tortured by all white cops. 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:17.080 Of course, I think race was a factor in all 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:20.840 of this. A lot of the abuse that was inflicted 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:24.440 was not just physical, but it was saw verbal and 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:26.680 it was regular use of the N word. 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.120 The stories were horribly similar, and the evidence was there 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:33.920 from the beginning. One torture victim, Aaron Patterson, managed to 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:37.000 leave a visible cry for help in the interrogation room. 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:40.720 And just picture this. This guy is being tortured and 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:44.120 he's scratching this message in a metal bench with a 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:48.800 paper clip, and the message couldn't be clearer. Please threaten 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:53.280 me with violence, slapped and suffocated me with plastic No 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:58.880 lawyer or dad signed false statement to murder. Why did 0:15:58.880 --> 0:15:59.480 he do this? 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:00.520 He did it. 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:03.920 Because he was afraid he wouldn't survive the torture, and 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:07.440 that even if he did survive, he was afraid that 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:09.160 no one would believe him. 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:12.440 Aaron did survive, and one of the other survivors was 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:13.360 Ronald Kitchen. 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:17.360 Ronald later realized that the second officer who participated in 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:20.640 his interrogation, the one who took off his name tag 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:24.600 before beating him, well, that was no ordinary member of 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:28.360 the Midnight Crew. That was John Birge himself. 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:33.520 By the time John Conroy published House of Screams, John 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:36.440 Burge and the Midnight Crews torture campaign had been going 0:16:36.440 --> 0:16:40.600 on for nearly twenty years. Meanwhile, Burge had been promoted 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:44.320 to commander, outranking ninety nine percent of the other officers 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:45.720 on the Chicago Police Force. 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:50.080 So my article came out in January nineteen ninety as 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:54.440 we were approaching press time. I was really an easy 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:58.560 I thought, Oh Jesus, you know we're going to go 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:02.160 with a story that says that the Chicago police engaged 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:06.680 in torture. Nobody had said anything of the kind before. 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:10.639 I thought there would be a furre and we might ensue. 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:13.640 Even though we had done every legal check that could 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:14.240 be done. 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:17.840 Burge was a powerful man, but the allegations against him 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:21.560 were too numerous and too similar to ignore. In nineteen 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:25.359 ninety one, John Burge was suspended from the Chicago Police force. 0:17:25.720 --> 0:17:29.120 The local police union rushed to Burges's defense, throwing him 0:17:29.119 --> 0:17:30.840 a fundraiser at a union hall. 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:35.000 I was there. It was packed with more than a 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:39.320 thousand people, probably most of them cops, but I'm sure 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:42.439 some of them were state's attorneys, because I know that 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:45.080 it was advertised in the State's Attorney's office. 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:49.800 Meanwhile, more and more allegations of police torture were coming forward, beatings, 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:53.760 cattle prods, Russian roulette. The Chicago Police Board held a 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:56.960 hearing in nineteen ninety two into Burges's alleged misconduct. 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:00.600 Basically, it was an employment fitness here. It was not 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:05.840 a criminal case, and the city had attorneys present the 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:09.640 case against Birch, and they did a pretty darn good job. 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:13.639 I thought they actually sold the Police Board on the 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:16.400 idea that something had indeed happened here. 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:19.920 During the hearing, an internal police report came to light. 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:24.280 It suggested that police supervisors had known about the midnight 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:29.239 cruise systemic brutality for years. In nineteen ninety three, the 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:33.080 Police Board found that John Birge had participated in physical 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:36.159 abuse and fired him from the Chicago Police. 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:40.560 Now. The Police Board's decision was remarkable in that it 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:44.000 never used the word torture. It said, John Birge did 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:47.359 chick and or punch and or deny medical attention to 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:51.400 and or and or and or you couldn't tell what 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:55.480 exactly do you think happened. So as a result of 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:58.520 that decision, Burge got fired, but he was allowed to 0:18:58.560 --> 0:18:59.840 retire with his pension. 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:04.160 Another agency, the Office of Professional Standards, began investigating two 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:07.080 and it released a report that went a step further. 0:19:07.480 --> 0:19:10.960 The investigation found that Chicago police had taken part in 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:16.640 a systematic, planned torture campaign that command officers knew about. Meanwhile, 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:19.679 Ronald Kitchen, one of the victims of that torture, was 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:22.359 still on death row for a crime he didn't commit. 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:25.359 And remember, he was there along with other men who 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:28.240 had been tortured just like him by John Burge and 0:19:28.240 --> 0:19:32.040 the Midnight Crew. For years, Ronald's appeals failed and the 0:19:32.080 --> 0:19:35.280 system turned a blind eye to the unthinkable abuse he suffered. 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:38.880 But Ronald and the others on death row didn't stay silent. 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:42.919 The group began finding their voices, speaking out about the 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:46.120 fact that the Midnight Crew had tortured innocent people into 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:47.040 falsely confessing. 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:51.720 What's amazing to me is how these men found their voice. 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:56.879 They did so by re enacting each other's trials. You 0:19:56.960 --> 0:20:00.520 have to remember that when people are in prison, every 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:04.359 instinct tells you not to talk to other inmates about 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:08.680 your case. But these men, they acted out their case. 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:13.040 They played the role of prosecutor of defense, attorney of 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:18.399 police witness, and in some cases they convicted one another. 0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:23.359 That process gave them agency, and at the end of 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:28.320 the day, all of these men became great storytellers. They 0:20:28.359 --> 0:20:30.840 could not only tell the story of what happened to 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:34.399 each of them, but they could tell the stories of 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:34.960 each other. 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:40.640 As the Midnight Crew torture scandal blew up, Ronald's personal 0:20:40.680 --> 0:20:44.040 fight for justice became unignorable. In two thousand and one, 0:20:44.160 --> 0:20:47.040 Ronald got a new team of post conviction lawyers. They 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:51.200 discovered previously undisclosed evidence about that prison snitch who claimed 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.840 Ronald had confessed. Turns out, the snitch had received money 0:20:55.040 --> 0:20:58.840 an early release from prison in exchange for his false testimony. 0:20:59.400 --> 0:21:02.800 That evidence, plus the discovery of the Midnight Crew torture 0:21:02.840 --> 0:21:06.840 scandal led prosecutors to agree that Ronald's conviction should be 0:21:06.880 --> 0:21:10.440 thrown out. On July seventh, two thousand and nine, Ronald 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:14.399 Kitchen became a free, exonerated man. Six weeks later, he 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:27.639 was awarded a certificate of innocence. Those forty five minutes 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:30.520 that Ronald had expected to be gone they turned into 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:34.720 twenty one years behind bars. The Gage Park killings have 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:37.760 never been solved. As for the other men on death 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:41.440 row with Ronald, over the years, several of them walked free, 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:44.840 to those who remained in prison had their sentences commuted 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:48.399 to life, and their continuing to fight their cases. And 0:21:48.440 --> 0:21:51.280 what about John Birge, Well, as we told you, he 0:21:51.320 --> 0:21:54.440 got kicked off the Chicago Police Force. But neither John 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:57.359 Burge nor any member of the Midnight Crew was ever 0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:01.399 charged with or convicted of any act of torture because 0:22:01.440 --> 0:22:04.280 the statute of limitations had passed by the time the 0:22:04.320 --> 0:22:07.200 truth came to light. Maybe we can find some small 0:22:07.200 --> 0:22:09.800 measure of justice though, in the fact that John Birge 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:15.080 did go to prison for lying about torture. In twenty ten, 0:22:15.160 --> 0:22:18.600 Burge was sued by someone he'd tortured during the lawsuit, 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:21.879 Burge gave a sworn statement denying that any abuse had 0:22:21.920 --> 0:22:26.080 occurred on his watch. That falsehood was enough to convict 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:30.199 Burge of perjury. John Burge served from twenty eleven to 0:22:30.240 --> 0:22:33.800 twenty fourteen in federal prison, a much shorter length of 0:22:33.840 --> 0:22:37.240 time than many of his victims spent behind bars. After 0:22:37.280 --> 0:22:40.720 he left prison, Burge gave an interview calling the torture 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:44.879 victim's human vermin. He took up residence in Florida, still 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:49.040 collecting his police pension four thousand dollars a month. He 0:22:49.119 --> 0:22:51.399 even drove a boat called Vigilante. 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:54.240 Well, no justice was not served in this case. I 0:22:54.280 --> 0:22:56.320 mean he was sentenced to four years in prison. He 0:22:56.320 --> 0:23:01.400 didn't serve that long. Birge was convicted thirty seven years 0:23:01.600 --> 0:23:05.280 after the first time. We know that he used electric shock. 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:08.880 You know, at the end of the day, John Burge 0:23:08.920 --> 0:23:12.159 was released after only serving a few years in prison, 0:23:12.560 --> 0:23:15.840 while Ronald and the other men on death row spent 0:23:16.119 --> 0:23:19.720 decades in some of the harshest prisons in Illinois system. 0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:21.639 That's not justice. 0:23:22.119 --> 0:23:25.400 In twenty eighteen, John Burge died at his home in Florida. 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:29.760 After his death, the police union posted a statement on Facebook, 0:23:30.119 --> 0:23:32.879 saying that the Fraternal Order of Police does not believe 0:23:32.920 --> 0:23:35.639 the full story about the Birge case has ever been told. 0:23:36.359 --> 0:23:40.960 They're probably right. Decades after Burge's reign of terror, allegations 0:23:40.960 --> 0:23:43.760 of torture by the Midnight Crew are still coming to light. 0:23:44.440 --> 0:23:46.600 In two thousand and nine, the State of Illinois formed 0:23:46.640 --> 0:23:50.120 a Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission to review and respond 0:23:50.119 --> 0:23:54.159 to these allegations. Meanwhile, lawsuits upon lawsuits have been filed 0:23:54.160 --> 0:23:57.080 and are still being filed. So far, the Midnight Crew 0:23:57.119 --> 0:24:00.240 has cost the City of Chicago one hundred million million 0:24:00.359 --> 0:24:04.600 dollars in brutality settlements, defense costs, and reparations. 0:24:05.040 --> 0:24:10.199 A reparations ordinance passed by the city Council created a 0:24:10.440 --> 0:24:14.720 fund so that many of these torture survivors, those with 0:24:14.880 --> 0:24:19.280 credible claims of torture, could be compensated for what happened 0:24:19.280 --> 0:24:23.680 to them. It was a recognition and ownership of this 0:24:23.840 --> 0:24:27.000 problem by the City of Chicago, and it's never happened 0:24:27.080 --> 0:24:29.280