Vol. 76/No. 30      August 13, 2012

Michael Tillman, who was subjected to waterboarding and severely beaten and spent 23 years behind bars on trumped-up charges of rape and murder, was awarded $5.37 million. Originally sentenced to life plus 25 years, he was declared innocent and released in 2010.

David Fauntleroy will receive $1.8 million. He had been sentenced to life in prison in 1986 for a 1983 double murder, but all charges against him were dropped in 2009 after proving that all the “evidence” against him was extracted through torture.

Tillman and Fauntleroy are two of more than 100 men, all of them African-American, who were convicted and incarcerated based on confessions coerced from them through beatings and other torture at the hands of the notorious “midnight crew”—a gang of cop thugs operating under the command of former police lieutenant Jon Burge.

Tillman named former Mayor Richard Daley as a defendant in his suit, along with Burge and 14 others. Burge was convicted in 2010 of lying about the tortures and since March 2011 has been serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence in federal prison.

Before becoming mayor, Daley was Cook County State’s Attorney for eight years. He has been named in prior cop torture lawsuits, but judges have previously dismissed him as a defendant, citing the immunity given prosecutors. In a decision handed down July 20, 2011, Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer ruled Daley should remain a defendant in Tillman’s suit for joining in a conspiracy to cover up torture while he was mayor.

Shortly after final arrangements for Daley’s deposition were set Cook County agreed to pay $600,000 to settle with Tillman. Tillman also received $200,000 from the state of Illinois for wrongful conviction. The civil settlements means Daley and other remaining defendants didn’t have to testify.

“If [Daley] had done what he should have, I would not have been tortured, lived with the fear of the death penalty, or sent to prison,” said Tillman in a statement. “To me, this settlement proves that Daley, Jon Burge, and Burge’s torture crew did me terribly wrong.”

“We’re disappointed that we’re not going to be able to question Mayor Daley, but we know that he remains a central figure in the torture scandal,” said Flint Taylor, Tillman’s attorney.

There are still another 25 to 30 cases currently under investigation out of a total 110 complaints, David Thomas, executive director of the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission, told PBS’ Frontline. The rest haven’t yet been pursued.
 
 
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