Chicago City Wire

Attorneys representing police officer defendants in a wrongful conviction lawsuit are objecting to references to former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge, whose past misconduct has been cited in unrelated cases involving alleged coercion of suspects.

Lawyers for Robert Smith, convicted of the 1987 murders of his wife’s mother and grandmother, have, according to defense attorneys, “identified over 70 ‘Burge-related’ exhibits in his initial draft of the pretrial order and insists in his Response that an unidentified but ‘tremendous amount of evidence’ relating to Burge is admissible...Plaintiff’s Response does not identify what the extent of this evidence is or how it’s admissible under any of these rules. Plaintiff simply offers conclusory statements about the substance of the evidence and admissibility without any actual analysis."

Defense lawyers argue “this is not a Burge case. Burge was not at Area 2 at the time of the Yeager/Alexander [mother/grandmother] homicide investigations. Burge was not involved in the Yeager/Alexander homicide investigations in any investigatory or supervisory capacity.”

“Burge did not sign any of the paper related to the Yeager/Alexander  homicide investigations,” the attorneys continued. “Burge did not testify at Smith’s criminal trial or at any subsequent post-conviction proceeding. Smith never alleged, in the almost 38 years since the Yeager/Alexander homicide investigations in 1987, that he suffered abuse at the hands of Burge. Burge is not even a named Defendant in this case.”

The Smith complaint names the city of Chicago, former Chicago Police Department (“CPD”) Superintendent Phillip Cline, former CPD Detectives Daniel McWeeny,  Steven Brownfield, William Pedersen,  John Solecki, and M. Rowan, and deceased Detective John A. Yucaitis, unidentified Employees of the City, and  Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Raymond Brogan.

The complaint says that the “Detective Defendants – all protégées of disgraced Area 2 Violent Crimes Lieutenant Jon Burge – framed Robert for the murders by beating, threatening, and abusing him, over a 19-hour-long interrogation at Area 2 Violent Crimes, causing him to falsely confess to a story that the Detectives made up about the murders.”

The complaint adds that the “Detective Defendants also framed Robert by fabricating and planting evidence that the State used at Robert’s August 1990 trial to convict him, and by concealing and withholding material exculpatory evidence from Robert, his attorneys, the jury, as well as from the criminal trial and appellate courts.”

Smith spent 33 years in prison for the murders, but was exonerated by former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx in October 2020 and set free on claims that police in Area 2 tortured him. His attorneys filed a wrongful conviction suit in federal court in March 2021.

Burge was fired by the CPD in 1993, found guilty in federal court in 2007 for perjury stemming from allegations that he abused suspects. He died in 2018.