Andrew Wilson’s 26-year-old fight for justice comes to an end one year too late

Andrew Wilson was charged in Chicago with killing two police officers in 1982, but not before going through what media outlets are calling a trial by torture.

Twenty-six years later, Wilson - who died about a year ago - and his family can have a piece of closure.

"Justice delayed is justice denied," said Tony Peraica, Republican candidate for Cook County's state attorney. "It's the U.S. attorney who is going to provide some justice to the families who were horribly affected by this."

Wilson was one of the criminal suspects who filed a civil lawsuit 22 years ago against the Chicago Police Department and Jon Burge to expose torture and physical abuse of people in custody.

After being arrested by Burge and confessing to the murders hours later, Wilson emerged from the police station and was taken to Mercy Hospital, where a doctor documented 15 separate injuries, according to his obituary in the Chicago Reader. Wilson told public defenders that he'd been shocked, burned by a radiator, nearly suffocated with a plastic bag and kicked in the eye and beaten.

"This is the saddest and most troubling chapter in Chicago history," Peraica said. "Two hundred African-Americans in Cook County were tortured in the most vicious way by Burge and his men in the 2nd District."

Wilson's suit, along with several others, led to the firing of Burge in 1993 - and his indictment Tuesday.

"There is no place for torture and abuse in a police station," said Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. attorney in Chicago. "No person is above the law, and nobody - even a suspected murderer - is beneath its protection."

According to Tuesday's indictment, Jon Burge was a Chicago police officer from 1970 to 1993. The Chicago Police Department assigned its detectives to different geographical divisions known as areas, which were based at different police stations.

From 1972 until 1986 Burge held different positions - detective, sergeant, and lieutenant - in Area Two on the city's South and Southwest Sides.

During this time, the indictment says Burge was present for, and at times participated in, the torture and physical abuse people being questioned on one or more occasions. While working as lieutenant, Burge was also aware that detectives he was supervising were engaged in the torture and abuse.

After 1991, a series of lawsuits were filed in Chicago alleging that Burge and his officers were participating in these acts, including a suit by Madison Hobley filed in 2003, which led to Tuesday's perjury charges.

Burge was suspended by the Chicago Police Department in 1991 and fired in 1993. He was arrested Tuesday in his Florida home on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury, less than a month before the statute of limitations on the alleged crimes runs out.

"Police officers don't serve the public as judge and jury and they have a special responsibility to care for those within their custody, regardless of their alleged crimes," said Robert Grant, special agent-in-charge of the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

A woman who answered the phone at the Fraternal Order of Police, the police union, said everyone was in a general meeting all day and would not be available for comment.