* This is obviously some pretty big news…

For the first time, a federal judge has ruled former Mayor Richard M. Daley can be sued as a defendant for his alleged role in what plaintiffs claim is a citywide conspiracy to cover up police torture.

And Daley could be deposed by lawyers representing alleged victims, all African American, who charge their abuse came at the hands of a small band of predominantly white police officers under the command of former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge. […]

Michael Tillman spent 23 years in prison for murder. He confessed, said Taylor, because he was suffocated and beaten by Chicago Police officers. “They used a form of waterboarding, pouring 7-Up up his nose,” Taylor said. “That’s the kind of torture they used over a four-day period with Michael Tillman.”

When he was released in 2010, Cook County special prosecutors concluded there was no reliable evidence against him. Tillman received a certificate of innocence from the chief judge of the Criminal Courts of Cook County.

In his civil lawsuit, Tillman alleges the city conspired to cover up torture cases.

Burge, 63, already has been deposed by Taylor at the federal prison in North Carolina, where he is serving his sentence. During the deposition, Burge, seen for the first time wearing a khaki prison uniform, repeatedly took the Fifth Amendment.

This case just makes me sick. And Daley has never been held accountable.

* More…

Daley has been named in three other brutality lawsuits stemming from the torture and abuse that Burge is believed to have perpetrated years ago on dozens of African American men in Chicago — many of whom gave coerced confessions. But as they did in the Tillman case, the city moved to remove Daley from the lawsuits.

* Meanwhile…

Fifteen incarcerated men who claim they were sent to prison by confessions that were beaten, burned and tortured out of them by convicted Chicago police Lt. Jon Burge and his officers are getting some high-profile help - including from a former Illinois governor.

In a friend-of-the-court brief to be filed Wednesday with the Illinois Supreme Court, ex-Gov. Jim Thompson and more than 60 current and former prosecutors, judges and lawmakers are asking for new evidentiary hearings for inmates who say their convictions were based on coerced confessions. […]

The brief “gives the Illinois Supreme Court the opportunity to finally and firmly repudiate the Burge era of the Chicago Police Department,” said Thompson, a former Republican Illinois governor and U.S. attorney.

Lawyers are filing the brief in the case of Stanley Wrice, an inmate who has been claiming since 1982 that he falsely confessed to a brutal sexual assault only after Burge’s officers beat him in the face and groin with a flashlight and a piece of rubber.

Wrice, 57, is serving a 100-year sentence. Attorneys say he’s one of the longest-serving inmates with a Burge torture claim.

* From a press release…

Wrice, who remains in prison, was granted a hearing into the torture claims by the Illinois Appellate Court in 2010. In appealing that ruling to the Supreme Court, prosecutors argue that the admission of Wrice’s tortured confession was “harmless error,” because there was enough other evidence to support his conviction.

In their brief, the group of legal luminaries forcefully condemned this argument, writing:

“It is simply intolerable that any person should languish in prison as a result of conviction that rests even in part on a confession that Burge and his men are credibly claimed to have tortured into being. Our commitment to that position cannot be half-hearted – where, for instance, the use of tortured evidence might be rationalized after the fact as not having mattered to the outcome of the case. Instead, we believe Burge’s torture is so profoundly antithetical to our notions of justice and fair play that it cannot be permitted to taint any conviction, no matter the strength of the other evidence against the defendant.”

The group asks the Supreme Court to:

· Direct the Office of the Special Prosecutor to identify every case where a current Illinois prisoner claims his conviction rested at least in part on a false confession submitted under the duress of torture.

· Order the Chief Judge of the Cook County Circuit Court to conduct hearings into evidence of torture and determine, in each case, whether torture occurred.

· Void any convictions that are ruled to rest in whole or in part on confessions obtained illegally through torture.

Discuss.