Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-31T15:45:59.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

RACIST TORTURE AND THE CODE OF SILENCE

A Situational Analysis of Sidebar Secrecy and Legal Cynicism in the Trial of Jon Burge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2021

John Hagan*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Northwestern University
Bill McCarthy
Affiliation:
School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University Newark
Daniel Herda
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Merrimack College
*
Corresponding author: John Hagan, Sociology Department, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 60608. E-mail: j-hagan@northwestern.edu.

Abstract

We join Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s structural theory of the racialized U.S. social system with a situational methodology developed by Arthur L. Stinchcombe and Irving Goffman to analyze how law works as a mechanism that connects formal legal equality with legal cynicism. The data for this analysis come from the trial of a Chicago police detective, Jon Burge, who as leader of an infamous torture squad escaped criminal charges for more than thirty years. Burge was finally charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, charges that obscured and perpetuated the larger structural reality of a code of silence that enabled racist torture of more than a hundred Black men. This case study demonstrates how the non-transparency of courtroom sidebars plays an important role in perpetuating systemic features of American criminal injustice: a code of silence, racist discrimination, and legal cynicism.

Type
State of the Art
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hutchins Center for African and African American Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Austen, Ben (2018). High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Baer, Andrew (2020). Beyond the Usual Beating: The Jon Burge Police Torture Scandal and Social Movements for Police Accountability in Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226700502.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, Monica C. (2017). Police Reform and the Dismantling of Legal Estrangement. Yale Law Journal, 126: 20542150.Google Scholar
Bogira, Steve (2005). Courtroom 302. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo (1997). Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation. American Sociological Review, 62(3): 465480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, Jon (2010). Police Torture Archive, Jon Burge, Chicago, 13. U.S. v. Burge, Jon Burge. US v. Burge.pdf https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ch5e6i674shwpr8/AADlPsCmSASfpbWERyCQYVdya?dl=0.Google Scholar
Byrd, Doris (2004). Sworn Statement of Doris Byrd. Patterson v. Burge, No. 3 4433, November 9, 2004, 67, PLOTE.Google Scholar
Byrd, Doris (2010). Police Torture Archive, Jon Burge, Chicago, 13. U.S. v. Burge, Doris.Byrd. US v Burge.pdf. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ch5e6i674shwpr8/AADlPsCmSASfpbWERyCQYVdya?dl=0.Google Scholar
Byrne, Jane (2006). To: OSP Memorandum to Andrew Wilson/ Jackie Wilson Files. From: Robert D. Boyle. Date: January 16, 2006. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ch5e6i674shwpr8/AADlPsCmSASfpbWERyCQYVdya?dl=0 Google Scholar
City of Chicago (2016). Recommendations for Reform: Restoring Trust Between the Chicago Police and the Communities they Serve. Report of the Police Accountability Task Force, April. https://igchicago.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/PATF_Final_Report_4_13_16-1.pdf (accessed April 20, 2021).Google Scholar
Conroy, John (2000). Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Conroy, John (2006a). The Police Torture Scandal: A Who’s Who. The Chicago Reader, June 16.Google Scholar
Conroy, John (2006b). Doe in the Headlights. The Chicago Reader, Nov. 30.Google Scholar
Conroy, John (2007). The Persistence of Andrew Wilson. The Chicago Reader. Nov. 9.Google Scholar
Daniels, Steve (2018). Tallying the Cost of Bad Cops. Crain’s Chicago. July 9, 1, 22.Google Scholar
Eisenstein, James E., and Jacob, Herbert (1977). Felony Justice: An Organizational Analysis of Criminal Courts. Boston, MA: Little & Brown.Google Scholar
Farley, Reynolds (1984). Blacks and Whites: Narrowing the Gap? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farley, Reynolds (1993). The Common Destiny of Blacks and Whites: Observations about the Social and Economic Status of the Races. In Hill, Herbert and Jones, James E. Jr. (Eds.) Race in America: The Struggle for Equality, pp. 197233. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Farley, Reynolds, and Allen, Walter R. (1987). The Color Line and the Quality of Life in America. New York: Russell Sage.Google Scholar
Goffman, Irving (1963). Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Hagan, John, McCarthy, Bill, and Herda, Daniel (2018). Race, Legal Cynicism, and the Machine Politics of Drug Law enforcement in Chicago. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 15(1): 129151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagan, John, McCarthy, Bill, and Herda, Daniel (2020). What the Study of Legal Cynicism and Crime Can Tell Us about Reliability, Validity, and Versatility in Law and Social Science Research. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 16: 120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartnett, Michael (2010). Police Torture Archive, Jon Burge, Chicago, 13. U.S. v. Burge. U.S. v. Burge. 6.21 and 6.22.10.pdf. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ch5e6i674shwpr8/AADlPsCmSASfpbWERyCQYVdya?dl=0.Google Scholar
Hess, David (2016). Undone Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/9780262035132.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirk David, S., and Matsuda, Mauri (2011). Legal Cynicism, Collective Efficacy, and the Ecology of Arrest. Criminology, 49(2): 443472.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirk David, S., and Papachristos, Andrew V. (2011). Cultural Mechanisms and the Persistence of Neighborhood Violence. American Journal of Sociology, 116(4): 11901233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koenemann, Keith (2013). First Son: The Biography of Richard M. Daley. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lacey, Samuel (2010). Police Torture Archive, Jon Burge, Chicago, 13. U.S. v. Burge, Sammy Lacey US v Burge.pdf https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ch5e6i674shwpr8/AADlPsCmSASfpbWERyCQYVdya?dl=0.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas S., and Denton, Nancy (1993). American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
McCleskey v. Kemp (1987). 481 U.S. 279.Google Scholar
McDermott, Michael (2010). Police Torture Archive, Jon Burge, Chicago, 13. U.S. v. Burge, McDermott. US v Burge.pdf. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ch5e6i674shwpr8/AADlPsCmSASfpbWERyCQYVdya?dl=0.Google Scholar
Meisner, Jason (2016). Trial to Expose ‘Street Files’ Used to Hide Evidence Years Ago. Chicago Tribune, November 21.Google Scholar
Mertz, Elizabeth (2007). The Language of Law School: Learning to Think Like a Lawyer. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, Wendy L. (2008). Reproducing Racism: White Space, Elite Law Schools, and Racial Inequality. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Moore, Wendy L. (2014). The Stare Decisis of Racial Inequality: Supreme Court Race Jurisprudence and the Legacy of Legal Apartheid in the United States. Critical Sociology, 40: 6788.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mueller, Jennifer C. (2018). Advancing a Sociology of Ignorance in the Study of Racism and Racial Non-Knowing. Critical Sociology, 12(8): e12600 Google Scholar
Raba, John (2010). Police Torture Archive, Jon Burge, Chicago, 13. U.S. v. Burge, Dr. Jack Raba. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ch5e6i674shwpr8/AADlPsCmSASfpbWERyCQYVdya?dl=0.Google Scholar
Ralph, Laurence (2020). The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothstein, Richard (2017). The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. London: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Rotella, Carlo (2019). The World is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampson, Robert J. (2012). Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampson, Robert J., and Bartusch, Dawn Jeglum (1998). Legal Cynicism and (Subcultural?) Tolerance of Deviance: The Neighborhood Context of Racial Differences. Law & Society Review, 32(4): 777804.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shedd, Carla (2015). Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Smith, Mitch (2019). Four Chicago Police Officers Fired for Cover-Up of Laquan McDonald Shooting. New York Times, July 19.Google Scholar
Stinchcombe, Arthur L. (1991). The Conditions of Fruitfulness of Theorizing about Mechanisms in Social Science. Philosophy of Social Science, 21(3): 367388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, G. Flint (2019). The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago. New York: Haymarket Books.Google Scholar
Tonry, Michael (1995). Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
United States Department of Justice (2017). Investigation of the Chicago Police Department. Civil Rights Division and United State Attorney’s Office Northern District of Illinois. January 13.Google Scholar
Van Cleve, Nicole (2016). Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Walecka, K. I., and Patti, K. Musetti (2010). Jon Burge Trial Summaries, May 26–June 24. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ch5e6i674shwpr8/AADlPsCmSASfpbWERyCQYVdya?dl=0 Google Scholar
Western, Bruce (2006). Punishment and Inequality in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Whatley, Warren, and Wright, Gavin (1994). Race, Human Capital, and Labour Markets in American History. Working Paper #7, Center for Afro-American and African Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.Google Scholar
Wilson, William J. (1987). The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar