Following his arrest on July 21, 1986, Tillman was ruthlessly abused by the infamous "Midnight Crew" at Area 2 Police Headquarters, a cadre of rogue Chicago cops operating under Burge's right-hand man, Sergeant John Byrne. Based largely on a bogus confession extracted during that unlawful interrogation, Tillman was wrongfully convicted of murdering Betty Howard and was sentenced to prison, where he remains today.
On Tuesday, attorneys from the Peoples Law Office and the Roderick MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University will file a post-conviction petition asking the court to vacate Tillman's conviction and order new trial. The move comes in the wake of massive evidence that Tillman was a casualty of a systematic ring of torture that Burge and his underlings inflicted on African-American suspects from the early 1970s through the 1990s.
"Of all the torture cases in the system, the ones like Tillman's are particularly galling," said Locke E. Bowman, Legal Director of the MacArthur Center. "Tillman has been in prison for twenty three years for one reason only: he was tortured into confessing to a crime he didn't commit."
Since Tillman unsuccessfully appealed his conviction in 1999, Burge, Byrne and detectives under their command have been implicated by multiple law enforcement officials in a pattern of torture. In 2006, a Cook County Special Prosecutor issued a report concluding that the torture occurred, and last year U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald indicted Burge. Meanwhile, Burge, Byrne and their associates have invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination under questioning about abuse charges.
Stymied by the decades-long cover-up of the torture ring and unable to afford a lawyer, Tillman was forced to let the statutory deadline for his post-conviction petition expire. But in filing the petition on his behalf Tuesday, Tillman's attorneys called on Attorney General Lisa Madigan to allow the case to be considered on the merits, rather than seeking to dismiss it on a technicality.
"Prosecutors are required to hold the interests of justice higher than the pursuit of convictions," said G. Flint Taylor of the People's Law Office. "Mr. Tillman has set forth a powerful case of torture, innocence, and cover-up in his Petition. This is therefore a most compelling case for Attorney General Madigan to honor her prosecutorial oath, the interests of justice, and her pledge that she will not rely on tortured evidence. To do so she, or whoever succeeds her as the prosecutor in this case, must forego technical defenses and agree that Tillman is entitled to a hearing on his claims of torture and innocence."
SOURCE MacArthur Justice Center
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