March 1, 2011 - Huffington Post Editorial
Locke Bowman, Director of the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University

Last month Jon Burge, the disgraced former Chicago Police Commander whose men tortured scores of African American suspects into confessing during a reign of terror that spanned nearly two decades (from the 1970s through the early 1990s), was finally sentenced to four and a half years in prison for denying under oath that he directed and participated in the torture.

By MORGAN SMITH, New York Times

Judge Calls Evidence Against Burge and Underlings "Staggering" and "Damning"

CHICAGO, May 22 – Nineteen years after he was viciously beaten by subordinates of indicted former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, Victor Safforld – formerly known as Cortez Brown – was awarded a new trial today when a Cook County Circuit Judge overturned his wrongful murder conviction, and calls the evidence against the cops “staggering” and “damning.”

Dodging 'moral responsibility'  

CHICAGO, Dec 22 - After five years of fighting to keep Chicago Police torture cases from being reopened, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is seeking to shift responsibility for a handful of the remaining cases to the Cook County state's attorney's office.

MacArthur Justice Center is a non-profit public-interest law firm at Northwestern University School of Law that litigates issues of significance for the criminal justice system, including prisoner rights, the death penalty, and gun control. In this time of limited resources for the poor, the MacArthur Justice Center spends more than $400,000 annually to provide free legal representation on criminal justice issues affecting the indigent.