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36 Litig. 13 (2009-2010)
Truth or Consequences: Police Testilying

handle is hein.journals/laba36 and id is 151 raw text is: Truth or Consequences: Police Testilying by Jon Loevy More lawyers are bringing more lawsuits against police offi- cers than ever before. And more plaintiffs, it seems, are win- ning bigger verdicts-often far bigger. The result is driving the growth of a police misconduct civil rights bar, and this article examines the changes in public perceptions of police officers that have made that growth possible. Who are they gonna believe-you or me? The year was 1982. The words were uttered by a now-infamous Chicago Police Commander named Jon Burge, who had brought back with him from the Vietnam War some controversial new inter- rogation techniques, including electric shock torture. The man to whom the question was posed was Andrew Wilson, who had just been arrested for shooting and killing two Chicago police officers in cold blood. In a locked police interrogation room, Burge was trying to obtain a confession by attaching metal clips to Wilson's ears and other body parts, which were then charged with electricity. Wilson's bare skin was also pressed against a hot radiator, and he was smothered with a plastic bag. At the time, Burge was a revered leader in the police depart- ment and a decorated war veteran. Wilson was a barely liter- ate African American gang member with a lengthy criminal record. When Burge taunted Wilson with Who are they gonna believe? Burge assumed he knew the answer. It turned out that Burge was wrong. Though it took more than a decade to do it, Wilson eventually won a civil lawsuit alleging police torture-despite having been convicted of the murders of the police officers. And now, some 28 years after the fact, Burge is himself under federal indictment. The stat- ute of limitations has long since run on the torture itself, but prosecutors intend to prove that Burge lied in sworn discovery responses submitted in a civil case wherein he denied torturing Jon Loevy is with the civil rights law firm of Loevy & Loevy in Chicago, Illinois. LITIGATION Spring 2010 Wilson and numerous other African American men accused of serious crimes. The Burge trial began in May 2010. What changed? When I first started doing civil trials in police abuse cases in the mid-1990s, plaintiffs' lawyers would ask courts to give a jury instruction reminding jurors that all persons stood equal before the law and that jurors should thus not afford any more or any less credibility to state- ments made by witnesses or parties simply because they were police officers. In seeking that instruction, the plaintiffs' bar was looking for a way to counteract a prevailing assumption that the police were always right and should be believed. Now, 15 years later, the lawyers for the police in Chicago sometimes seek the same sort of instruction-that is, to remind juries that the testimony of police officers deserves their fair consideration as well and that such testimony should not be automatically discounted just because they are police. Juror perception has seemingly reversed itself. From exalted to suspicious. Back in the proverbial old days, police officers in our society were set on a pedestal. Officers of the law could do no wrong. In old movies and our grandparents' memories, the police were by definition always the good guys, regardless of the context. To be sure, police officers are still respected and held in high esteem by most Americans, and rightfully so. They have a very difficult job, and most perform it honorably and well within the bounds of the law. In most communities, children are taught that police officers are heroes who, along with fire fighters and soldiers, are fighting a just fight on behalf of all of us. But attitudes have changed, and unconditional deference no longer exists. What the police say happened is no longer accepted without question. This development has opened the door to lawsuits that would not have been brought in the past. And all of that assumes mainstream opinions. In some minority communities, the rebuttable (or even irrebuttable) presumption is that police officers are always lying. 13 Volume 36 Number 3

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