Both the prosecution and the defense in the federal trial of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge rested their cases Tuesday. Closing arguments are scheduled to begin Thursday.
The court reporter who took the murder confession of alleged police torture victim Andrew Wilson testified earlier Tuesday that though Wilson “looked like someone had popped him one” in the right eye, he did not see any indication that Wilson was tortured.
Defense witness Michael Hartnett testified that Wilson, then a suspect who was later convicted of the murder of two Chicago police officers, had facial injuries when Hartnett took his statement on February 14, 1982. But he said Wilson never suggested that he had been abused, threatened or beaten while in custody, and Hartnett, whose job was to record the conversation between Wilson and state attorney Larry Heinman on a typewriter at the police station, never asked.
Hartnett said he noticed the scar above Wilson’s right eye was swollen and puffy, but closed and not bloody, when he recorded Wilson’s statement. Hartnett could not remember if there were burns on Wilson’s face.
“If it was one of my kids, I would have said, you know, they got popped by someone,” he explained.
If Wilson had told him he was tortured, Hartnett said, “I would have gone to the police and asked what happened here,” as well as notify the state’s attorneys he reported to.
During prosecutor Betsy Biffl’s cross-examination Hartnett said it was unusual that Wilson’s statement included no question or answer about how Wilson was treated by the police—a question routinely asked at the end of a court statement. Hartnett said he assumed Wilson was injured before his arrest.
“I have seen alleged defendants sitting before me covered in blood,” Hartnett testified, “and I don’t ask.”
Hartnett said nothing struck him as out of the ordinary about his visit to Area 2 that day.
“The mood was happy. It seemed like it was another end to another homicide.”
Hartnett said he similarly remembered nothing unusual about the court statements given by Gregory Banks, a suspect in a separate murder, at Area 2 on Oct. 30, 1983. Banks testified against Burge earlier this month.
Hartnett said he resigned from his job at the end of 1983 to go into the cable television business. Hartnett said that during his seven years as a court reporter he frequently received calls to Area 2 and was familiar with Burge.
Whenever he visited Area 2 on a call, Burge “was pleasant. He always said hello. He’d see if you wanted coffee.”
Burge smiled and chuckled from his seat in the court room when Hartnett noted that the CPD typewriters at the time were, “not the greatest to type on.”
The defense also called Wilbur Crooks, the assistant state’s attorney who questioned another Burge accuser, Shadeed Mu’min, on October 31, 1985.
Crooks, a retired Cook County judge and former police officer, testified that he would have conducted his interview with Mu’min differently had he known that Burge had questioned Mu’min privately in his office the night before.
However, Mu’min, who was accused of armed robbery, never mentioned Burge’s private questioning or said he was mistreated.
“I wouldn’t have taken a [court] statement,” if Mu’min had said he was abused, Crooks said. But Mu’min “seemed calm” as he sat on the bench in a room in the police station and waited for Crooks to conduct the interview.
The prosecution presented one rebuttal witness in the afternoon: Deborah Moran, the coordinator of reproductions and graphic arts for the Chicago Police Department, who presented a photo of Andrew Wilson that had slightly better lighting than the photos previously shown to the jury. She was questioned very briefly, and the defense conducted no cross-examination.
Closing arguments had been scheduled for Wednesday but were delayed a day due to what Judge Joan Lefkow termed “an undisclosed emergency among the lawyers” that she deemed “sufficiently important to postpone the trial.”