Attorneys Demand Deposition From Daley In Burge Torture Case
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Attorneys for a man who claims he was a victim of torture at the hands of police Cmdr. Jon Burge are not giving up the fight to question retired Mayor Richard M. Daley.
As WBBM Newsradio's David Roe reports, Daley was cleared to face one deposition on Thursday. But the Chicago Tribune reports Daley's attorneys refuse to say when he would be available for to answer questions in the case of Michael Tillman.
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Tillman served two dozen years in prison for a 1986 rape and murder. But his conviction was tossed last year.
Attorneys for Daley are asking U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer to reconsider her decision that the retired mayor can be named as a defendant in Tillman's lawsuit, which claims Daley failed to act against police torture while serving as Cook County State's Attorney in the 1980s.
Daley's attorneys say they will not cooperate until Pallmeyer rules on their motion, the Tribune reported.
Tillman's attorney, G. Flint Taylor, of the People's Law Office, says he might ask Judge Pallmeyer to force Daley to submit to a deposition, on the threat of being held in contempt of court, the Tribune reported.
Daley has been named in three other brutality lawsuits besides Tillman's.
Burge was convicted of perjury last year for lying about torturing prisoners into making confessions. He was sentenced in January to 4 1/2 years in prison, and reported to a federal penitentiary in Raleigh, N.C., in March.
Since Burge was fired from the Police Department in 1993, his name has become synonymous with police brutality in Chicago.
Dozens of suspects accused Burge and the detectives under their command of shocking them with a homemade electrical device, suffocating them with typewriter bags, putting guns to their head and playing Russian roulette -- all to force them to confess to murders they didn't commit.
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