Results tagged “johnburge”

Former Chicago Police commander John Burge, arrested last year on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury, has successfully postponed his trial for the third time. The Chicago Sun Times reports Burge has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and will be undergoing radiation treatment in Florida when his January trial is scheduled to begin. Burge’s lawyers requested the postponement, saying that it was “nonsense” to imply he is using his illness to further stave off the trial. In fact, Burge’s legal team appeared disappointed in not beginning the trial, with one of his lawyers saying he “would have loved a Christmas jury with a cancer patient. That’s a combination for an acquittal.”

The effects of former police commander Jon Burge's arrest last fall in connection with torture charges is now being felt. On Friday, a Cook County Judge ruled that Victor Safforld, a.k.a. Cortez Brown, will get a new trial after he determined a trio of officers under Burge's command - James O'Brien, Anthony Maslanka and John Paladino - tortured Brown into confessing. If a new trial is pursued against Brown, his alleged confession will most likely not be admitted. Brown was convicted of two murders in 1990 and sentenced to death though that sentence was later commuted to life. While Brown admitted he was a gang member, he said he had been beaten into confessing, claiming, according to the Trib, "the detectives punched him, beat his legs and hands with a metal flashlight and slapped him in the head for a half hour until his will was broken."