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What the Tribune called a “bizarre twist” came as the City Council’s Finance Committee decided to table for two weeks discussion of the settlement being negotiated between Chicago and three former Death Row inmates exonerated by Governor Ryan on grounds their confessions were false and tortured out of them. The three — Madison Hobley is one — then sued the city. The plaintiffs thought they had a $14.8 million deal months ago, but the city never presented it to the City Council for approval. Some furious aldermen intended to speak up Wednesday and demand the city stop paying private attorneys millions of dollars to handle the suits and just pay the money.
Both papers bit, posting stories that don’t make any sense. U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has been begged by lawyers and other partisans of the former inmates to find a way to get around the statute of limitations and prosecute Jon Burge, the disgraced former police commander who was tossed off the force for misconduct in 1993, and men under him named as abusers in the accounts of dozens of former suspects. Why would Fitzgerald reopen a 21-year-old case against a torture victim in which no apparent federal crime was committed and in which double jeopardy is an obvious barrier?
