Imagine being a young Black teenager, arrested for no reason other than existing in your neighborhood. You’re taken to a police station, where officers beat you with clubs, suffocate you with plastic bags, and electrocute your genitals until you confess to a crime you didn’t commit. This horrifying reality was the story for Marcus Wiggins, who, at just 13 years old, became one of over 100 Black men tortured by former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and his “Midnight Crew.”
From the 1970s to the 1990s, Burge and his team used barbaric tactics to force false confessions from Black men, many of whom were juveniles. Victims like Anthony Holmes, Darrel Cannon, Stanley Howard, and Marvin Reeves spent decades behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit. Some were even sentenced to death.
A System That Turned a Blind Eye
Burge’s actions were not a secret within the Chicago Police Department. His “success” in clearing cases earned him promotions to sergeant, lieutenant, and eventually commander. Despite widespread knowledge of his brutal methods, judges and other officials ignored clear evidence of torture, often denying motions to suppress coerced confessions—even when victims appeared in court with visible injuries from beatings.
One exception was Judge Earl Strayhorn, a courageous Black judge who ruled that Burge had tortured Marcus Wiggins into confessing. But Strayhorn’s ruling was an outlier in a system that otherwise protected Burge and his crew.
Accountability Delayed, Justice Denied
In 1990, Burge was finally fired, but he faced no immediate criminal charges. It wasn’t until 2010 that he was convicted—not for his torture of Black men but for lying under oath about it in court documents. Burge served just 4 ½ years in federal prison and lived comfortably until his death in 2018. Meanwhile, his victims endured lifelong trauma, wrongful incarceration, and the loss of their families and freedom.
A Painful Legacy
To this day, the City of Chicago is defending lawsuits filed by Burge’s victims, spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to fight cases brought by men who have been exonerated. The toll of Burge’s actions extends far beyond his victims—it underscores the systemic racism that allowed his reign of terror to persist for decades.
