Attorney General Lisa Madigan
James R. Thompson Center
100 W. Randolph, 12th Floor
Chicago, IL 60601

January 24, 2008

Dear Lisa Madigan:

On behalf of the victims of former Area 2 and Area 3 Violent Crimes Commander Jon Burge and certain Chicago police officers under his command, we, the undersigned are writing to urge you to initiate new evidentiary hearings on all cases you oversee in which evidence exists that acts of torture led or contributed to the conviction and incarceration of torture
victims in Illinois. We also urge you to use your status as Attorney General to call for new trials for all Illinois prisoners with evidence of torture, regardless of whether you or the States Attorney’s office is responsible for prosecution of their appeals.

As you are aware, the Special Prosecutors’ Report filed July 19, 2006, regarding police torture under Jon Burge, concluded that there was strong evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Burge and his subordinates committed numerous acts of torture against African-American defendants, including electrically shocking individuals on their genitals, lips and ears with an
electric shock box or cattle prod, suffocating individuals with plastic bags, subjecting men to mock executions with guns, physical beatings with telephone books and rubber hoses, and numerous other forms of physical and psychological abuse.

These acts of torture were committed, in part, to extract confessions from the victims. These confessions were subsequently used against them in their criminal prosecutions, resulting in their convictions. Strong evidence exists that the number of victims may be in the hundreds. Many of these men
remain incarcerated today as a direct result of the misconduct of the Chicago Police Department and the complicity of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office during this dark period in Chicago’s history.

On July 10, 2007, the Cook County Board passed Resolution 07-R-290, urging you, as our Illinois Attorney General, to initiate new evidentiary hearings to determine if Burge’s victims were coerced into confessing. However, six (6) months have passed and neither you nor your office have taken action for these men, who remain wrongly incarcerated today.

Ms. Madigan, we would like to remind you of your campaign promise. When you ran for Attorney General in 2002, you said: "I can promise that as attorney general, I will never cover up the truth and stand in the way of justice."

Yet in five years on the job, you have yet to order a single evidentiary hearing for torture victims you continue to prosecute. The failure to give torture victims their day in court will continue to haunt your career until you take action to right this wrong. As Dr. Martin Luther King pointed out in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail: “Justice too long delayed is justice
denied.”

If your father, brother or son had confessed to a crime while being electrocuted, suffocated, beaten, or mock-executed, would he still be incarcerated? We think otherwise, and demand the same courtesy for torture victims and their families.

We would like to meet with you without delay and await your response. You can reach us at (773)955-4841.

Yours truly,