This saga reveals the underside of American Society, where police abuse their power, and criminals work along with them. If these abuses area as widespread as suggested, there is an institutional problem with the Chicago police. Once read that when there are a lot of homicides in a city it suggests high levels of police corruption. [From article]
Over the years, Brzeczek said, he had watched the Cook County state’s attorney’s office fight several “nasty, protracted battles” on cases that “it eventually lost.” He added, “Most of the decisions were based not on legalities or what’s right or what should be done but, rather, on ‘How is this going to wash politically?’ ”
[. . .]
If you have a proven instance where an officer lied to put an innocent person in jail, it calls into question all the other cases in which his word has been a primary source of information.” He said of the Conviction Integrity Unit, “Its record is pretty dismal.” He added, “Was it simply a P.R. move? Thus far, there’s no evidence of more than paper reform.”
[. . .]
In 2009, Gayle Horn and another lawyer, Karl Leonard, filed a petition for post-conviction relief for Hood, arguing that the evidence against him had “unraveled,” and that the officers involved had “a long history of similar misconduct.” Morgan, Sr.,’s most recent murder conviction, they argued, demonstrated a “clear modus operandi: Morgan, Sr. has killed close friends and loved ones for financial gain by shooting them . . . and leaving their partially or fully nude bodies to die in and around abandoned cars.”
[. . .]
He said he realized a while ago that “this thing is bigger than me,” and that “there’s a chain of corruption.”
[. . .]
He couldn’t help feeling that justice was a kind of lottery, and that he was stuck holding a bunk ticket. “Do I have something written on my forehead saying, ‘Y’all can just do something to me’?” he pleaded. “What’s wrong with me?”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/crime-fiction
AUGUST 04, 2014 ISSUE Crime Fiction
Did the Chicago police coerce witnesses into pinpointing the wrong man for murder?
BY
NICHOLAS SCHMIDLE
