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LOCAL News :: Crime & Police

Innocent Man Framed by Burge Cops Sues Cops

Police coerced teenager Harold Hill into falsely confessing to a murder and rape he did not commit. Recently tested DNA evidence demonstrated his innocence.
Harold Hill, et al (sm).jpg
Harold Hill with his attorneys, Jon Loevy and Russell Ainsworth of Loevy and Loevy (left to right), at a news conference.
CHICAGO, Ill. – After living with murder and rape charges nearly half of his 33 year life, Harold Hill will finally have an opportunity to get justice from the Chicago police who framed him.

Yesterday Hill filed suit in federal court against nine current and former Area 3 police officers. Among the defendant officers is Lieut. Kenneth Boudreau, who has compiled a notorious record of false confessions of young and otherwise vulnerable defendants ("Veteran Detective's Murder Cases Unravel," see Tribune article link below).

Hill is one of over 100 African American men tortured or physically coerced into giving confessions to police under the supervision of then-Commander Jon Burge, who was fired by the City in February 1993 for torture after a 2-1/2 decade rein of terror at both Area 2 and Area 3 Police Headquarters. In Hill's case, police also deliberately suppressed exculpatory evidence, destroying documents and withholding physical evidence that would have prevented his 1994 conviction.

Background

On October 14, 1990 Chicago firefighters discovered the partially-naked remains of 39 year-old Kathy Morgan amidst a fire in an abandoned building on West Garfield Boulevard. After going a year and a half without solving the murder/rape of Morgan, in March 1992 police arrested Hill, who never knew Morgan, on a totally unrelated robbery charge. Police repeatedly struck the then 18-year-old Hill, interrogating him about a variety of unsolved crimes. Because Hill had no personal knowledge of Morgan's murder or how it was committed, the "confession" eventually given by him incorporated the version of the crime furnished to him by his interrogators. Based on information supplied by the police, Hill's confession implicated two other young African American men, Dan Young and Peter Williams.

At the time of this interrogation, Young was totally illiterate, unable to read or write anything other than his own name. His IQ of 56 was well below the common benchmark for retardation, and his verbal IQ was only ten points above the lowest score possible. Notwithstanding his obvious mental deficiencies, Young was interrogated at length without counsel, during the course of which police kicked and struck him in order to induce him to falsely confess and implicate himself, Hill and Williams.

Williams, then 19, was subsequently interrogated by Boudreau and others. He was chained with handcuffs to a radiator for hours, and was forced to urinate on himself by denying him access to a bathroom. They then beat him with a blackjack, put a pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger, whereafter he confessed and also falsely implicated Hill and Young.

Jail records subsequently confirmed that Williams could not have committed the crimes, as he was locked up in the Cook County Jail at the time of Morgan's murder. The charges against him were dropped.

Tried separately from each other in 1994, both Hill and Young testified that their confessions were false and had been coerced. Nonetheless both were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Recent forensic testing, including DNA testing, conducted in the past two years on all of the physical evidence relating to the Morgan murder excluded all three men as suspects.

In January of 2005, twelve years after they were sentenced to life in prison, Cook County prosecutors formally dropped all charges against Hill and Young relating to the Morgan murder. In addition to Hill, Young had a civil rights case filed against police, but tragically died in an unsolved hit-and-run traffic accident earlier this year.

Hill, the father of a 17-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son, is represented by Jon Loevy of the civil rights law firm, Loevy and Loevy (the author also works there). See below for a copy of the lawsuit.
harold_hill_v._chicago_complaint.pdf
Harold Hill v. Chicago complaint.pdf (1066 k)
 
 

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