Burge To Report To Same Prison As Madoff
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge is expected to report to prison later this week, and he could meet a jailhouse celebrity.
Burge was convicted last year of lying about torturing prisoners into making confessions. He was sentenced in January to 4 1/2 years in prison.
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He is set to report to prison Wednesday, in the same facility where Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff is serving his sentence.
The 72-year-old Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex, which has both medium- and low-security facilities, as well as a medical center.
Burge is scheduled to report to the prison near Raleigh, N.C., by 2 p.m. Wednesday — a week after his name was conjured with the signing of a death penalty repeal in Illinois. Former Gov. George Ryan pardoned Death Row inmates who said Burge played a role in their convictions.
An attorney for Burge said his legal team worried about Burge being sent to a prison where he could encounter issues stemming from his days as a high-ranking police official.
"That was a major concern of ours. I would be shocked if they didn't take that into consideration, where he would be designated," William Gamboney said of the former Area 2 commander. At Butner, "I think that it would make it less likely that he's going to be with the crazed criminals he was dealing with in Area 2," he said. "It's more white-collar crime."
Reached at home Friday, Burge, who lives in the Tampa, Fla., area, declined comment.
A U.S. Bureau of Prisons official said she could not comment.
Attorneys asked the Bureau of Prisons to consider Burge's many ailments when placing him. "That must have factored into the decision. He still has a bunch of different medical issues. There are some procedures that need to be done," Gamboney said.
Burge, 63, had prostate cancer and needs a followup procedure in April, Gamboney said.
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.
The Chicago Sun-Times contributed to this report, via the Sun-Times Media Wire
