The Cook County Board has scheduled a public hearing for 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, June 13, 2007, to explore why Special Prosecutors Edward J. Egan and Robert D. Boyle spent $7 million in county funds on a four-year investigation of Chicago police torture but failed to return indictments.

Among those scheduled to testify:

* MADISON HOBLEY, one of the "Death Row 10" sent to Illinois's death row by a torture-induced confession, and later exonerated after many years in prison. Hobley is currently pursuing a civil suit against the City. A few months ago the City offered to settle it and three other suits for $19.5 million, but then rescinded that offer. Since then, the City's outside counsel has billed an additional $1 million+ and is desperately using every procedural trick it can to prevent the testimony of Mayor Daley under oath.

* FLINT TAYLOR, founding partner of People's Law Office and one of the principal attorneys who have tried cases involving police torture by former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and his associates. Taylor has been actively trying anti-police brutality cases since the time of the police murder of the Black Panthers in Chicago.

* Attorney STANDISH WILLIS, a leader of African Americans Against Police Torture, a group which has launched a campaign to deny Chicago the 2016 Olympics unless the City comes clean about the decades-long Burge tortures. Among their demands are criminal charges against Burge and his associates, and a thorough investigation of the role of then-States Attorney, now-Mayor Richard M. Daley, in using torture-induced confessions to obtain death penalty and long-term prison convictions of dozens of African American suspects.


In February 1982 Daley was sent a letter by then-Chicago Police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek suggesting that he investigate the tortures, but Daley apparently never took any actions to stop them.

The resolution calling for Wednesday's hearing was sponsored by Cook County Commissioner Earlean Collins in response to a report issued on April 24, 2007, by a coalition of public interest groups, legal academics, civil rights leaders, defense lawyers, and human rights advocates.