July 23, 2006 - Chicago Tribune (IL) Truth Has Value, Even Without Justice Police Torture Report By Rex W. Huppke, Tribune staff reporter

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The truth about acts of torture in the Chicago Police Department, laid out over 290 pages, was there for all to see -- those who wanted the facts, and perhaps more important, those who didn't.

It took special prosecutor Edward Egan and Robert Boyle, the chief deputy special prosecutor, four years and more than $6 million in taxpayer money to investigate the atrocities that went down behind the doors of police interrogation rooms on the South Side in the 1970s and '80s.

Filtering the fiction from decades of rumors and allegations left prosecutors with horrifying conclusions. Suspects were punched and kicked. Burned and shocked. Tortured.

And yet the truth comes too late. Statutes of limitation have long since passed. None of the perpetrators of these malevolent acts will be prosecuted.

So what's the point in finding the truth -- and spending millions in the process -- if that truth won't bring about justice?

That question has been on many Chicagoans' minds since the report was released Wednesday. As a society, we have a proclivity for avoiding ugly truths, but when we're forced to face them, they'd best come with consequences.

In this case, we're left to ponder the intrinsic value of truth itself.

"Revelations are always instructive and valuable, even if they're beyond the reach of the criminal justice system," said retired U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Nathaniel Jones.

History buttresses the judge's claim.

In 1947, a committee appointed by President Harry Truman released a report detailing endemic discrimination and violence against blacks throughout the country.

The report -- "To Secure These Rights" -- didn't lead to criminal prosecutions. But its findings shocked many Americans and laid the groundwork for civil rights policies for decades to come.

In the mid-1990s, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed to explore human rights violations committed during apartheid.

"It was clear that many of the persons who committed the atrocities there would never be prosecuted," Jones said. "Nevertheless, it had a cleansing effect to disclose it. It's important to lift up the screen and pull back the veneer and let people see how ugly our past has been so they can conform their conduct to a higher standard."

No Indictments Likely

Even before Egan and Boyle started their work in 2002, most involved knew the investigation was unlikely to lead to indictments against former police Cmdr. Jon Burge or any of his officers.

Judge Paul Biebel Jr., who appointed the special prosecutors, didn't think that mattered when the investigation began, and he doesn't think it matters now.

What's important, the judge said last week, was that the crimes were finally investigated.

Boyle concurred: "There has been a cry in this community for a long time that no one has ever been willing to step up and say what really happened. For once and for all ... I think that is accomplished with this."

Flint Taylor, a plaintiffs' attorney who has spent more than a decade investigating the torture charges, said the report doesn't go far enough in explaining the cruel acts that were committed, and he said the argument that statutes of limitation have expired is a "sham."

But, he said, better to see an insufficient acknowledgment of what happened than no acknowledgment at all.

"It's important that they found that there was systemic torture," Taylor said. "It's important that the press and history record it and make of it what it really was."

Free from any personal attachment, academics easily see the report's worth, philosophically and pragmatically.

"I think there might very well be a longer-run value of a social kind," said Susan Haack, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Miami. "Imagine that we'd found out about what was going on at Enron too late to prosecute the people involved. An investigation would still have done good. It would have a deterrent effect on others, just as this does."

Need To Understand Causes

Michael Lynch, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut and author of the book "True to Life: Why Truth Matters," said it's critical for Americans to learn and face the realities behind governmental malfeasance, particularly when it involves crimes as serious as torture.

"Unless we look at it in all its gory detail, we may miss the causes of it," he said. "If we don't understand what the causes are, we won't know how to prevent it."

Civil lawsuits will continue to play out in this case, and Taylor and other attorneys representing those who suffered at the hand of corrupt officers will push relentlessly for some form of criminal charges.

For what it's worth, Burge and the other men whose callous acts the prosecutors detailed will inescapably, in life and in death, be remembered as torturers.

Philosopher George Santayana famously noted: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

The hope, then, is that by knowing what happened in the windowless rooms of places meant to mete out justice, not pain, our memory of these crimes will be strong enough to ensure they never happen again.

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