A Cook County judge Thursday refused to overturn a Chicago man’s murder convictions, saying the man’s claims of police torture were false.
In a forcefully worded 57-page order, Cook County Judge William Hooks said George Anderson’s claims that he was kicked, punched and hit with a baton by Area 3 detectives working under disgraced former Cmdr. Jon Burge were a “failed attempt to paint himself as a victim of Chicago police torture.”
“It is different because there are dozens of legitimate African American torture victims of disgraced federal felon Jon Burge and certain of his colleagues,” Hooks said. “Anderson has falsely claimed to have ridden on the Burge torture bus and he knows it.”
Anderson was found guilty of the murder of 11-year-old Jeremiah Miggins in August 1991 and pleaded guilty to the killing of 14-year-old Kathryn Myles two months earlier. Anderson’s lawyers said his confessions, made on successive days in police custody following his arrest for Miggins’ murder, were the result of beatings at the hands of CPD detectives who have been named in multiple police torture cases.
Reading from his order Thursday, Hooks pointed that Anderson had provided no medical evidence to show he had been beaten, and likened his claims to a passerby who witnesses a bus accident, then claims to have been an injured passenger.
Anderson sat impassive, staring at the carpet in front of him, as Hooks read his oder. Anderson’s attorney, David Owens, meanwhile, leaned over and stroked his forehead.
Anderson’s lawyers had pointed to the history of allegations of abuse lodged against the detectives who got Anderson to confess, including veteran CPD Det. Kenneth Boudreau, who took the stand during a hearing last February and categorically denied he abused Anderson or any other suspect.
Owens vowed to appeal Hooks’ ruling, which he said, misread the evidence in the case.
Hooks in 2018 granted a new trial to Jackie Wilson, who had claimed he was tortured by Burge and his crew of detectives in Area 2 and forced confessed to his role in the 1982 murders of Chicago Police Officers William Fahey and Richard O’Brien.
Owens said Anderson made his claims well before the abuse allegations against Burge and his subordinates were well known, and said the detectives involved in Anderson’s confessions had “long and storied histories” of torture.
“George Anderson has been making his claims since 1991... the idea that George Anderson is someone who’s coming on or jumping on the bandwagon after the fact is false,” Owens said. “We look forward to proving it on appeal.”
Burge was fired from CPD in 1993. In 2011, he was sentenced to four years in federal prison for lying about the abuse of criminal suspects. Burge died in 2018.
