Truth Stories: Credibility Determinations at the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal Volume 45 Issue 4 2014 Summer Article 4 2014 Truth Stories: Credibility Determinations at the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission Kim D. Chanbonpin John Marshall Law School Follow this and additional works at: http://lawecommons.luc.edu/luclj Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Kim D. Chanbonpin, Truth Stories: Credibility Determinations at the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission, 45 Loy. U. Chi. L. J. 1085 (2014). Available at: http://lawecommons.luc.edu/luclj/vol45/iss4/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by LAW eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Loyola University Chicago Law Journal by an authorized administrator of LAW eCommons. For more information, please contact . CHANBONPIN.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 4/30/2014 9:37 AM Truth Stories: Credibility Determinations at the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission Kim D. Chanbonpin* This is the first scholarly Article to investigate the inner workings of the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (“TIRC”). The TIRC was established by statute in 2009 to provide legal redress for victims of police torture. Prisoners who claim that their convictions were based on confessions coerced by police torture can utilize the procedures available at the TIRC to obtain judicial review of their cases. For those who have exhausted all appeals and post-conviction remedies, the TIRC represents the tantalizing promise of justice long denied. To be eligible for relief, however, the claimant must first meet the TIRC’s strict four-element test for credibility. This Article argues that through its over-reliance on these credibility standards, the TIRC effectively inscribes and reproduces a dominant narrative of police torture, one that promotes a “bad apples” myth and ignores the contributing factors of broader-scale forces such as racism and inadequate police accountability mechanisms. By accepting certain claims of torture as credible and rejecting others, the TIRC engages in the construction of a socio-legal truth about Chicago’s police torture crisis. This Article explores the truth-making function of the TIRC, examining its adjudicatory processes under the framework of what Andrew Woolford and R.S. Ratner call “the informal-formal justice complex.” The TIRC is an informal justice practice in that it provides a forum for the adjudication of police torture claims in a space created outside the formal legal system. In reality, however, the TIRC straddles * Associate Professor, The John Marshall Law School, Chicago, Illinois. My thanks to the attendees of the SEALS 2012 new scholars panel and in particular my mentor, Carlton Waterhouse; the April 2013 JMLS Faculty Works-in-Progress series; and the 2013 Applied Legal Storytelling Conference who provided helpful comments during early presentations on this work. I am indebted to Margaret B. Kwoka and Deborah Post for reading later drafts of this Article in conjunction with the 2013 Northeastern People of Color Conference; their careful review and critique greatly improved the end product. David Thomas, the former Executive Director of the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission, also provided helpful comments, which helped me refine this Article’s discussion of the Commission’s summary disposition process. 1085 CHANBONPIN.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 1086 4/30/2014 9:37 AM Loyola University Chicago Law Journal [Vol. 45 the line between formal and informal justice systems, and this awkward position is the source of ongoing tensions. Like other informal justice practices, the TIRC relies on the State to provide the authority to execute its mission; this dependent relationship generates results that tend to ultimately reinforce State power. Fortunately, social movements maintaining a position outside of the complex have cultivated a number of counterpublics as alternate discursive spaces used to challenge State power. The Article ends with a consideration of two alternative forums for justice—the Survivor’s Roundtable and the People’s Hearings on Police Crimes. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 1086 I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND: POLICE TORTURE IN CHICAGO (1970–PRESENT) .......................................................................... 1091 A. The Burge Era ....................................................................... 1092 B. 1993 to Present ..................................................................... 1097 C. The Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission Act ..................................................................... 1103 II. FRAMING THE TIRC WITHIN THE INFORMAL-FORMAL JUSTICE COMPLEX ........................................................................ 1106 A. Formal vs. Informal Justice Practices .................................. 1106 B. The Canadian Example ......................................................... 1109 C. The Informal-Formal Justice Complex ................................. 1112 III. CREDIBILITY DETERMINATIONS AT THE TIRC .............................. 1115 A. The Summary Disposition Process ........................................ 1117 B. Reification of the Dominant Narrative .................................. 1123 IV. ALTERNATIVES TO SUMMARY DISPOSITION .................................. 1127 A. The TIRC’s Evidentiary Hearing Powers ............................. 1127 B. Police Accountability Counterpublics ................................... 1132 CONCLUSION....................................................................................... 1141 INTRODUCTION “It is now common knowledge that in the early to mid-1980s Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and many officers working under him CHANBONPIN.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 2014] 4/30/2014 9:37 AM Truth Stories 1087 regularly engaged in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions.”1 Revelations of corruption, abuse, and misconduct by police and other law enforcement officers throughout the country are all too familiar.2 New York,3 Los Angeles,4 and New Orleans,5 among other cities, have each experienced their own well-publicized police brutality scandals. Police torture, however, is a qualitatively different thing. The Chicago Police Department (“CPD”) is responsible not only for the severe beatings of criminal suspects and other individuals in its custody, but also for electrocutions, baggings, wallings, food and sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, mock executions, and Russian Roulette;6 cruelties that sound more like the Central Intelligence Agency’s (“CIA”) “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on terrorist suspects held overseas after the September 11 attacks. CPD officers used these techniques to obtain confessions, punctuating the interrogation sessions with racial epithets designed to demean their victims.7 These confessions were later introduced into (...truncated)