Tortured Justice: What Does Justice Look Like?

Summary

Podcast Summary: CNN Presents: Tortured Justice with Omar Jimenez

Episode: "Tortured Justice: What Does Justice Look Like?"
Date: September 17, 2025

---

Overview

In this gripping episode, Omar Jimenez explores the elusive concept of “justice” in the aftermath of decades-long police torture scandals in Chicago. Centering on the case of James Gibson—wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for 30 years after being tortured by the Chicago Police “Midnight Crew”—the episode traces the extensive toll on survivors, families, and the city. Jimenez dissects efforts toward accountability, reparations, reform, and the persistent divide between legal outcomes and true justice.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Human Toll of Lost Years (00:00–03:00)

• Jimenez’s Personal Reflection: Omar begins with a vivid memory from his college days investigating Chicago police torture cases. He shares the sobering impact of how years lost to wrongful convictions fundamentally alter lives long after freedom:

  "To him, just being able to get up, go across the street, use a card to pay, eat a burger, that's an achievement. He actually said to me, 'I'm an achievement.' But it comes with this lifetime of lost experiences." (Omar Jimenez, 01:12)

• Scale of Harm: Jimenez frames the episode’s central question: Can justice ever be truly served when so much has been lost—time, relationships, a sense of self?

Exposing the CPD “Midnight Crew” & Mounting Pressure (03:05–08:44)

• Unraveling Systemic Torture: Flint Taylor (civil rights lawyer) and the voices of torture survivors recount how mounting documentation revealed a sprawling pattern of abuse:
  • "We kept a running tab of how many cases of police torture were being uncovered and being documented." (Flint Taylor, 04:09)
  • The tally of known victims grew from 15 to over 60.
• The Death Row 10: Black men tortured into death row confessions become effective activists, driving public attention, media coverage, and coalition-building:
  • “They cut out letters from newspapers and magazines to make flyers for rallies... They got their moms and dads to show up to protests.” (Omar Jimenez, 06:09)
• Justice System in Crisis: Illinois Governor George Ryan enacts a moratorium on executions, citing the broken justice system:
  • “If we have mis-sent people to death row innocently, how many people are sitting now in prisons that were convicted and sentenced that really don't belong there?” (George Ryan, 08:12)

Institutional Responses & Limits of Accountability (08:44–17:22)

• Creation of TIRC: The Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (TIRC) offers a new, last-chance legal path for those with credible torture claims.
• Prosecuting John Burge:
  • Legal and Practical Barriers: A short statute of limitations on relevant felonies makes criminal prosecution extremely difficult.
  • Federal Case for Perjury: Burge is ultimately prosecuted not for torture, but for perjury—lying under oath in a civil case.
    • “In all those depositions, Burge never admitted to wrongdoing... He actually never said much at all besides asserting his Fifth Amendment right.” (Omar Jimenez, 12:34)
  • Victims Testifying Decades Later: Survivors relive traumatic experiences during testimony, highlighting the enduring scars.
  • Blue Wall of Silence: Even with immunity, police witnesses retract statements, upholding a culture of silence.

The Failure of the System and a Weak Form of Closure (17:22–21:32)

• Burge’s Sentence: Four and a half years in (minimum security) federal prison; serves less than four.

• Blame on City Leadership: Judge Joan Lefkoe singles out government inaction—including then-mayor Richard M. Daley’s silence.

  > “How can one trust that justice will be served when the justice system has been so defiled? That's what torture does to the pursuit of justice.” (*Judge Joan Lefkoe, paraphrased by Omar Jimenez, 19:02*)
  

Systemic Roots & the Call for Reparations (21:32–26:37)

• Not Just One “Bad Apple”: Professor Lawrence Ralph discusses the “torture tree”—the systemic nature and institutional complicity:
  • “If we look at what I call the torture tree, we see that there's a whole system... that actually grew the apple and that has the potential to grow many more.” (Lawrence Ralph, 22:15)
• Reparations in Chicago:

  • In 2015, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announces a historic reparations package: cash settlements, college tuition, public memorials, counseling, mandated curriculum in schools, and an official apology.

    “The biggest part of the apology was ownership, that the city... was accountable and responsible for what happened.” (Rahm Emanuel, 25:10)

Ongoing Reckoning & Reforms (26:37–28:27)

• Criminal Justice Reform: State’s Attorney Kim Foxx overturns hundreds of wrongful convictions, especially those unrelated to Burge, signaling how deep problems run.

James Gibson’s Fight for Exoneration (29:11–32:07)

• Persistence from Prison: Gibson becomes a jailhouse lawyer, helping others while tirelessly litigating his own case.
• TIRC Referral & Release: A TIRC finding leads to a new trial. In April 2019, charges are dismissed and Gibson walks free, later granted a certificate of innocence.
• The Aftermath:

  "I still carry scars on my body 36 years later... All the money in the world can't replace my happiness, my peace, my loss." (James Gibson, 31:25 & 42:23)

The Victim’s Family Perspective (32:07–36:59)

• Bill Benjamin’s Pain: The son of a murder victim for whose death Gibson was imprisoned still believes Gibson is guilty, struggles with uncertainty, and highlights another layer of trauma:
  • “For them all to say that they were all tortured by Burch, I doubt it. Maybe a few of them were... What about the victims’ families? I'll bet you none of them are happy. I know I'm not.” (Bill Benjamin, 35:00)

A Settlement—But Is That Justice? (37:23–44:45)

• $14.75 Million Settlement: City council approves Gibson’s large settlement—business as usual for them but personally momentous for him.
  • “They couldn't break me, Mama. I'm here.” (James Gibson, 40:52)
• Numbers Laid Bare: Over $119 million has been paid out to Burge’s victims; Chicago still faces hundreds of pending wrongful conviction claims. But the scale of loss is staggering and irreparable.
  • “All the money in the world can't replace my happiness, my peace, my loss. I lost everything.” (James Gibson, 42:23)
• Reflections from Key Voices:
  • Flint Taylor: Some sense of narrative victory—“He was fired. He was exiled to Florida. He ended up being reviled, being notorious. That the narrative had changed. That's what's so important.” (43:46)
  • Betsy Biffle, Prosecutor: No real justice—“I don't think paying someone millions of dollars... makes up for it.” (44:15)
  • Lawrence Ralph: Justice must include systemic accountability and shrinking police power. (44:48)
  • Bill Benjamin: “Obviously, I don't think there is any right now. Not for my family anyway.” (45:30)

Enduring Impact & The Elusiveness of Justice (46:23–47:24)

• James Gibson’s New Life: He starts a nonprofit to help other exonerees but admits to struggling with trauma and letting go.
  • “She would want me to let it go. I'm still working on it, Mom. I'm still working on that part.” (James Gibson, 46:37)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The world had moved on, but he was still in the same place... Now imagine that loss multiplied by 10, by 50, by however many people served time for something they didn’t do.” (Omar Jimenez, 01:12)
• “How can one trust that justice will be served when the justice system has been so defiled?” (Judge Joan Lefkoe, paraphrased by Omar Jimenez, 19:02)
• “I'm here, Mama. They couldn't break me.” (James Gibson, 40:52)
• “All the money in the world can't replace my happiness, my peace, my loss. I lost everything.” (James Gibson, 42:23)
• “If we look at what I call the torture tree, we see that there's a whole system... that actually grew the apple and that has the potential to grow many more.” (Lawrence Ralph, 22:15)
• “We thought we had justice and now there's question marks. Obviously, I don't think there is any right now. Not for my family anyway.” (Bill Benjamin, 45:30)
• “I don't know what it looks like at this point.” (Betsy Biffle, 44:15)

---

Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:00–03:00: Jimenez’s reflections; the scale of wrongful convictions
• 03:05–05:48: Flint Taylor on growing evidence; listing victims
• 05:48–08:44: The “Death Row 10”; mother’s activism; Illinois death penalty moratorium
• 08:44–10:15: Creation and impact of TIRC
• 10:29–17:22: DOJ prosecution; Burge’s perjury; enduring trauma for victims
• 17:22–21:32: Sentencing; city leadership’s silence; limited scope of justice
• 21:32–26:37: Systemic complicity explained; Chicago reparations package
• 29:11–32:07: Gibson’s legal journey to exoneration
• 32:07–36:59: Family of murder victim; the unresolved pain of victims’ families
• 37:23–44:45: Gibson’s settlement; weighing redress against loss; expert closing views on justice
• 46:23–47:24: Gibson’s present struggles; producer credits

---

Tone & Language

• The narrative remains empathetic, inquisitive, and at times anguished, echoing the voices of both the wrongly convicted and the families of crime victims.
• Interviews and direct speech retain the emotional rawness of the speakers, with palpable frustration, hope, and resignation about the complexity or impossibility of “justice.”

---

Final Reflection

The episode incisively reveals how the law’s mechanisms—apologies, money, even legal victories—are rarely sufficient to repair lives devastated by wrongful conviction and torture. The open question “What does justice look like?” haunts every segment, surfacing uncomfortable truths: that justice is not a destination reached with a verdict or settlement, but a long, collective reckoning—one that, so far, has no satisfying endpoint for survivors, families, or the public.

Transcript

[Omar Jimenez]

There have been moments in reporting this story that have really just stopped me in my tracks, whether it's the scale or even just thinking about the time these people lost. And for what. The first time I learned about how police in Chicago had systematically tortured suspects for decades. I was a college student. I was working with the Chicago Innocence project back in 2014, and I met this man, another victim of police torture on the south side. His story is actually a lot like James Gibson's. He was also in prison for decades after being tortured by police. And he was exonerated after years of trying to get a rightful day in court. And I remember talking to him and he told me when he got out of prison, he was picked up. He was smiling in front of the cameras. And when he got in the car, someone had to explain to him how to use the seatbelt. Because when he went to prison in 1982, seat belts actually weren't required for passengers. That's how much the world had changed. And that small detail always stuck with me because it represented so much else. The world had moved on, but he was still in the same place. To him, just being able to get up, go across the street, use a card to pay, eat a burger, that's an achievement. He actually said to me, I'm an achievement. But it comes with this lifetime of lost experiences. Now imagine that loss multiplied by 10 by 50, by however many people served time for something they didn't do. It's honestly a scale of suffering that's kind of hard to grasp. So this episode is about the question we posed at the beginning of this series. Is justice possible when so much has been lost? I'm Omar Jimenez from CNN Presents. This is torture justice.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone.

[Omar Jimenez]

Learn [e-mail] this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

[Rahm Emanuel]

Potential savings will vary.

[Omar Jimenez]

Not available in all states or situations. It's the mid-90s. Chicago now knows in detail what John Burge and the Midnight Crew did Burge has been fired from the Chicago Police Department, but now he's actually moved south to live a quiet life in Florida, living off of the full police pension he was allowed to keep by the way. And none of the detectives on the Midnight Crew have been prosecuted for Burge's victims and the activists who supported them. Well now there's been public acknowledgment of what happened, but was this justice? At the center of so much of that work in Chicago is Flint Taylor, the civil rights lawyer who had represented Andrew Wilson. The civil suit that they had won against the city of Chicago inspired other victims of the Midnight Crew to come forward.

[Flint Taylor]

As we were doing these other cases, there was more and more evidence of torture coming out.

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

Here's 15 year old Marcus Wiggins.

[Omar Jimenez]

Put them things on my hands.

[James Gibson]

He's burning my hands.

[Flint Taylor]

We kept a running tab of how many cases of police torture were being uncovered and being documented.

[Various victims or family members (e.g., Myra Hobley)]

Gregory Banks has testified that after a street shooting back in 83 Chicago detectives beat and kicked and tortured a murder confession out of him. I was scared. I thought they was trying to kill me.

[Flint Taylor]

And it was going from 15 Perry.

[Various victims or family members (e.g., Myra Hobley)]

Cop, Melvin Jones, Madison Hobley to 40.

[Flint Taylor]

To 60 Aaron Patterson, Daryl Cannon, David.

[Various victims or family members (e.g., Myra Hobley)]

Bates, Leroy Oren, Ronald Kitchen and Derek.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

King, Stanley Howard and others.

[Omar Jimenez]

If you think about a teakettle on a hot stove, in the moments right before the water boils, you can hear the kettle sort of rumble. That's what it was like in Chicago in the 90s. The pressure was building for something, some kind of justice for the torture survivors and bearing down on the city from all directions.

[Flint Taylor]

John Conroy was writing additional articles in the Reader. As this evidence came out. There were reporters at the Tribune and the Sun Times who were interested and started to write about it.

[Omar Jimenez]

In the late 1990s, public attention zeroed in on the fate of one group of men. They had all been tortured by Burge and his crew and they had all been sentenced to death. They called themselves the death row 10.

[Various victims or family members (e.g., Myra Hobley)]

10 men now on death row claim Burge and some of his officers tortured them until they confessed.

[Flint Taylor]

Those were 10 men who were tortured by Burge and who had death sentences were doing their own organizing both in the prison and in conjunction with activists.

[Omar Jimenez]

All the men were black. The crimes they were convicted of included some of the worst things a person can do to another rape murder. That might have made them some of the least sympathetic of Burges alleged victims. But they also forced people to consider another dark possibility. If what they claimed was true, they represented the worst Thing the state could do to a person, Pin a crime on them and kill them for something they didn't do from prison. The Death Row 10 were extraordinarily effective organizers. They cut out letters from newspapers and magazines to make flyers for rallies that anti death penalty groups then distributed around the city. They got their moms and dads to show up to protests carrying signs plastered with their faces larger than life. And their work paid off in national media attention. Geraldo Rivera did a primetime piece about The Death Row 10 on CNBC featuring Myra Hobley, mother of Madison Hobley, who was wrongfully convicted of an arson that killed his wife and child.

[Various victims or family members (e.g., Myra Hobley)]

Myra Hobley is part of a group of women who came together as mothers of the death row 10. They believe police frame ups and torture are the only reasons their sons confessed and were in turn condemned to die. If somebody cut off your oxygen and you'll do whatever they want you to do.

[Flint Taylor]

Folks that were fighting against the death penalty and the folks that were fighting against police torture unified around the importance and connection of these two issues. And so that brought the issue even more to the forefront and gave it much more strength and power.

[Omar Jimenez]

The death row 10 turned this light on the terrible track record of the Illinois capitol punishment system.

[Various victims or family members (e.g., Myra Hobley)]

For every man Illinois has executed, it has set another man free, either because of new evidence or a reexamination of old.

[Omar Jimenez]

And in 2000, Illinois Governor George Ryan put a moratorium on executions in the state.

[Various victims or family members (e.g., Myra Hobley)]

Our system was in terrible shape.

[Omar Jimenez]

He told Geraldo Rivera about why he took such a historic step.

[Various victims or family members (e.g., Myra Hobley)]

If we have Ms. Sent people to death row innocently, how many people are sitting now in prisons that were convicted and sentenced that really don't belong there?

[Omar Jimenez]

And not long after that, Governor Ryan pardoned four of the death row 10 and granted a lifeline to every inmate on death row.

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

I'm commuting the sentence of all death row inmates, 167 of them.

[Omar Jimenez]

And then, after years of advocacy for victims of police torture in Chicago, the Illinois legislature responded by creating something new. It was called the torture inquiry and relief commission. TIRC Tirc. The eight member body was tasked with investigating claims of torture by burge or his detectives. And the idea was, if five or more members of the commission thought your claim was credible, they'd send it straight to the circuit court for judicial review. That typically means a hearing, and if the judge thinks you might have been wrongfully convicted, maybe a new trial.

[Flint Taylor]

I don't think at the time, we recognized the significance of that legislation. The thing about Turk was, even if you had exhausted all of your rights in criminal court and on appeal, post conviction under tirk, if you could show the commission that you had a serious case of police torture and that's one of the reasons you were convicted, then you could get back into criminal court.

[Omar Jimenez]

It was this legal door through what had previously been an impenetrable wall for a lot of people. James Gibson would actually end up being an early applicant to the new commission. But we'll come back to that in a bit. While the new torture Commission was starting to work through a backlog of cases, a group of prosecutors was building another case, a case against John Burge. Because somewhere along the line here, Burge made a mistake.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

There was definitely a sense of responsibility and hope that we would be able to do something that no one else had been able to do up until that point, or willing or able to do up until that point.

[Omar Jimenez]

Betsy Biffle is a former prosecutor. In 2007, she was a brand new employee of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. And one of the first things that landed on her desk was the Burge case. The outrage in Chicago, the protesters in the streets, the drumbeat of news stories with mothers of sons on death row, the dozens of accounts of torture that never seemed to end. It actually seemed like some Chicago leaders were finally listening. There was so much credible evidence of torture by police, but no criminal charges had been filed against the perpetrators. And there was a legal reason for this. Burge and his officers might have been charged with any number of felonies, armed violence, aggravated battery, conspiracy to commit those crimes, but there's a pretty short statute of limitations attached to them. In Illinois, only three years, meaning the government only had three years to charge Burge and the Midnight Crew after the crimes were alleged to have been committed. But at this point, Burge had been fired for more than a decade. So that door shut a long time ago. If there was no way for local prosecutors to charge Burge, the thinking went, well, maybe the Justice Department could.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

We had to figure out, is there a crime that was committed within the statute of limitations? And that was the bottom line.

[Omar Jimenez]

Biffle was part of a team of prosecutors working under the U.S. attorney at the time for the area, Pat Fitzgerald. They had to navigate a lot of documents, including long transcripts of depositions taken from John Burge and other members of the Midnight Crew when they were fighting off civil suits from torture victims.

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

J O N middle initial G as in George Burge. B U R G E. This is.

[Omar Jimenez]

One of many depositions in which Flint, Taylor and others questioned Burge about torture cases.

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

My lawyers advised me that the mere act of testifying to matters arising from my efforts as a Chicago police officer to apprehend criminals could cause me to be criminally indicted by a special prosecutor.

[Omar Jimenez]

In all those depositions, Burge never admitted to wrongdoing. He actually never said much at all besides asserting his fifth amendment right not to incriminate myself.

[Flint Taylor]

Now, in the early 1970s, did you have an electrical device that you used at Area 2?

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

I'll assert my Fifth Amendment right.

[Flint Taylor]

And specifically, did you have any kind of electrical device that was in a box or any kind of containment?

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

I will certain make fifth amendment right.

[Flint Taylor]

And was it. Did you have an electrical device?

[Omar Jimenez]

That was this tape. It goes on and on like this for more than three hours. In this deposition alone, I will shirt.

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

My fifth amendment rate.

[Omar Jimenez]

But it was one of these civil cases against Burge that tripped him up. It had to do with a case brought by Madison Hobley, one of the death row 10 who we mentioned earlier.

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

26 year old Madison Hobley is charged with seven counts of murder and authorities plan.

[Omar Jimenez]

In 1987, Hobley was charged with arson and murder after a fire in his apartment building killed seven people, including his wife and and young son. He said police detectives in Area 2 beat him, suffocated him with a typewriter cover and cuffed him to a wall for hours. And then they claimed he confessed to setting the fire.

[Various victims or family members (e.g., Myra Hobley)]

I didn't confess to this crime. That's something that they said. I did not confess to this crime. Didn't you have an interview with the cops? If that's what you want to call it. Well, what do you call it? I call it a beating, a beat down.

[Omar Jimenez]

Hobley maintained his innocence and the details of his torture through more than a decade in prison. And in 2003, Hobley was one of the four men pardoned by the governor.

[Various victims or family members (e.g., Myra Hobley)]

Where were you when Governor Ryan declared the moratorium on the death of him? I'll never forget that day. Tell me. I think Governor Ryan is a great man.

[Omar Jimenez]

After his release, he sued Burch and the city of Chicago. And buried in a pile of Madison Hobley's civil proceedings, Betsy Biffle and the other prosecutors working on the case found something Burge had to answer written questions from Hobley's attorney under oath. Among the questions, had he ever used torture methods on suspects? Did he know of any of his officers using them? Burge didn't plead the fifth in Hobley's case. His written answer was short but sweeping. And significant that he never used any such methods on suspects, nor was he aware of any. Biffle remembers paging through Hobley's case and reading that answer from Burch.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

When we saw that very broad answer, we knew it was different. We knew that this was really where we might have our hook. And then was the challenge of, so how do we prove it? How do we prove that he lied?

[Omar Jimenez]

Because by that time, 2003, a decade after Burge was off the force, there was a lot of evidence that showed he had tortured people and that he knew his detectives had too. Official reports had chronicled the torture. He'd been fired over it and lying under oath. That's a federal crime, one for which the statute of limitations had not run out yet. It was Biffle's job to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. A big part of that meant repeating the work that a lot of other investigators had done in the decade before, going back over dozens of cases alleging torture at the hands of Burge and his detectives. It wasn't easy. Biffle tried to talk with torture survivors and witnesses who just didn't want to.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Talk to a prosecutor, which was completely understandable, because why would they, why would they, why would and should they trust us after they had been let down so many times by the government up until then?

[Omar Jimenez]

In the end, they used only a handful of cases to prove the torture that Burge knew about when he claimed he didn't. Just a few. Out of well over 100 identified victims tied to Burge.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

What struck me was that even though it had been decades, they still were so affected by what had happened to them. And when they had to describe it, I mean, they're reliving it and we had to ask them to do that numerous times. Each time they talked to us, and then in front of the jury, with Burge sitting there and then exposing them to being attacked, it's really difficult. And I was very grateful to the victims who were willing to put themselves through that.

[Omar Jimenez]

The federal prosecutors had an uphill battle. One reason was the so called blue wall of silence, the unspoken rule that police officers do not incriminate or testify against each other. At first, Betsy Biffle and the other prosecutors thought they'd actually found someone willing to break the blue wall. An officer named Michael McDermott, who was a member of the midnight crew. He testified about witnessing torture to a grand jury and was granted immunity in order to testify at trial. But McDermott backtracked. When he took the stand during Burge's trial, he said he misspoke. That he thought about it more, that Burge was a good lieutenant. The jury found John Burge guilty anyway. In 2011, he was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice. At his sentencing, the judge, Joan Lefkoe, read this long statement while Burge stood in front of her. She was no stranger to violent crime. Her husband and her mother were shot dead in the Chicago home she shared with them just a few years before the Burge trial, targeted by a man angry over one of her rulings. It was clearly on her mind in this moment, she said, and I'm quoting here, how can one trust that justice will be served when the justice system has been so defiled? That's what torture does to the pursuit of justice. If justice is the fair and impartial application of the law, it can't exist anymore in a case where a suspect has been tortured and coerced. And the judge seized the moment at the sentencing to say in open court something that had been hinted at, alleged, assumed, shouted by protesters in the streets. People in power knew about this torture. She put it this way. If others, such as the United States Attorney and the State's Attorney, had given heed long ago, so much pain could have been avoided. She was talking to Burge, but to me it feels like she was referencing others, including the man who is now mayor of the city, Richard M. Daley. He's come up a lot in this series. He was state's Attorney when Andrew Wilson was tortured, the case that broke the whole Byrd story open. And his power only grew from there. For decades, critics have slammed him for covering up torture. He's never had to testify in court about it. He's also never apologized for what happened on his watch. I tried to talk to him for this. I spent weeks making multiple calls and emails to try to get an interview, even just a statement. I never got anything back. I also reached out to many of the police officers who made up the midnight crew, to the legal teams that have either represented them or. Or their estates. Nothing. There's a lot of silence in this story. Burge was sentenced to four and a half years in a low security federal prison in North Carolina. He served less than four. He got out in 2014 and died four years later at the age of 70.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

I felt that justice had been done, but to me it was never enough because it was only him.

[Flint Taylor]

Did you at any time shock him on the genitals, on ears or anywhere else?

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

I'll assert my Fifth Amendment right.

[Flint Taylor]

Did you from time to time use racial.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

It was terrible. What he did, what these people lived through and that they weren't believed and that people who were in positions to do something about it didn't do it. It's just very sad and it makes me angry.

[Flint Taylor]

Did you participate or witness any abuse of him?

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

I'll assert my Fifth Amendment right. I will assert my Fifth Amendment right. I'll assert my Fifth Amendment. I'll assert my Fifth Amendment. I will assert my Fifth Amendment. I'll assert right.

[Omar Jimenez]

There are a lot of police officers who made up the midnight crew. At least 19 have been accused of torture, but have never been convicted of a crime. Probably never will at this point. And then there are those that Betsy Biffle talked about, people higher up in the chain of command who knew about what was going on and didn't stop it.

[Lawrence Ralph]

In the narrative, there's a danger of isolating Burge and saying, well, it was just one police officer or one precinct. Right.

[Omar Jimenez]

Lawrence Ralph is the expert we heard from back in episode one. He's a professor at Princeton University and the author of a book about the Burge scandal called the the Torture Letters. And he studied the way things like this happen within a system.

[Lawrence Ralph]

I'm trying to get away from the kind of metaphor of a rotten apple, right? But if we look at what I call the torture tree, we see that there's a whole system and structure that actually grew the apple and that has the potential to grow many more apples. And there's branches that connect the apple to other places in the government like the district attorney's office, like the mayor's office.

[Omar Jimenez]

Dr. Ralph says this system allowed the torture to continue even if people knew the truth.

[Lawrence Ralph]

The way that I think about it conceptually is through the kind of idea of an open secret. The open secret is something that people know. It's just that we also know that nothing is going to be done about it. And so we have to see these things as connected or else we run the risk of allowing this to happen again.

[Omar Jimenez]

Treating John Birge like he's just a bad apple doesn't really do anything to prevent the system from creating more. John Burgess. The system had to change. And for police reform activists, a first step was reparations for the victims of police violence. After more than two decades of advocacy, a new city administration was willing to hear their calls for justice and to do something about it.

[Rahm Emanuel]

Basically, I wanted to close the book.

[Omar Jimenez]

In the spring of 2015, then Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a multi part reparations package for the survivors of torture under John. I talked to him this summer. Emanuel is also a CNN contributor these days, so I didn't have to go far to find him.

[Rahm Emanuel]

I wanted this chapter in the city to be put behind us. And also a reminder of what happened.

[Omar Jimenez]

Activists and altar persons, which are kind of like city council people in Chicago, had negotiated for months on the terms. 57 torture survivors were given $100,000 each in compensation. They and their families were given free tuition at Chicago City Colleges. The city promised to create a permanent public memorial, and it founded the Chicago Torture Justice Center, a place where people can seek help for the psychological harm created by racialized police violence that's still open today. The package also required that this story of police torture in Chicago be taught in public schools. It's now mandated history curriculum for 8th and 10th graders. The final piece was an apology from the city. Why did you feel that was a necessary step to take?

[Rahm Emanuel]

Well, because the city was still fighting, coming to terms with this. Here's a guy responsible for enforcing the law and upholding the law, who was violating the law, and he was doing it with the badge that the city gives him. And I thought, if you're looking for closure, the biggest part of the apology was ownership, that the city, in the name of this police officer, was accountable and responsible for what happened. So I thought there was an emotional and psychological component that no amount of money by itself could address, and the city had to own that fact.

[Omar Jimenez]

The reparations package had its critics, but the city called it historic, and so did a lot of the activists who worked on it. People like Flint Taylor, who's been fighting for justice for victims and for people to just listen to their stories for decades.

[Flint Taylor]

It's very rewarding to all of us who were involved in that struggle that students are learning the true narrative. That doesn't often happen, you know, because often the history that's taught and the history that's trying to be completely erased during this era, young people really need to know.

[Omar Jimenez]

The passing of the reparations package was a sign that there was a hunger in the city of Chicago for change, for a reckoning with the past and a different future when it came to how police and prosecutors fight crime. And more reforms followed. Cook county elected Kim Fox as state's attorney in 2016. A progressive prosecutor who ran on criminal justice reform, and she oversaw a lot of changes, but she really got headlines. For the number of criminal convictions she got overturned, we're talking hundreds, and most of them weren't related to Birch.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Kim Fox vacating seven murder convictions today tied to disgrace. Former Chicago Police Detective Reynaldo Guevara, former CPD Sergeant Ronald Watts planted evidence and fabricated charges on Southside residents for more than a decade.

[Omar Jimenez]

These allegations of police misconduct have had a significant stain on the justice system that we can no longer afford to ignore. While Fox was top prosecutor, she oversaw the release of 226 people whose cases were connected to just one cop, Ronald Watts. He eventually pleaded guilty to stealing drug proceeds from somebody who turned out to be an FBI informant. The civil lawsuits against him and the city are piling up, too. Chicago is still in the middle of this reckoning. The effort that started with activists way back in the 80s, the protests of the 90s, the investigations and lawsuits of the last 20 years. It was like this flood. The weather might be changing, but the water's still rising. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

This week on the Assignment with me, Adi Cornish. These new online accents are shaped by algorithms. Like linguists are finding that we're using that weird AI vocabulary everywhere. Our language model just keeps iterating, prompting new output. So everything's getting optimized into one big collab. And even worse, the out of context generational slang, as in low key. We're just vibing and talking like actual memes out loud now. Internet Culture 1 no, Cap, we're talking about why this is happening with a linguist, a language detective. Listen to the assignment with me, Audie Cornish. Streaming now on your favorite podcast, Apple.

[Omar Jimenez]

While all this reform we've been talking about was happening, James Gibson was still in prison.

[James Gibson]

I had to go to bed one night at a time.

[Omar Jimenez]

At that point, it had been over 25 years serving time for a crime, a double murder that he maintained he had nothing to do with.

[James Gibson]

I wrote every media outlet in the nation trying to, you know, get some help or somebody to just listen to my calls. I had like a formula, so to speak. I would write 20 letters a day and then I would file motions. I've been filing motions ever since.

[Omar Jimenez]

James became a jailhouse lawyer and over the years became a relentless litigator. Everything he learned about how criminal defense worked, he tried to pass on to others.

[James Gibson]

I used to, you know, teach guys and show them how to file grievances and I used to show them how to file post convictions, direct appeals. We getting up on some knowledge? Know your rights.

[Omar Jimenez]

Then in 2015, he got a break. He'd filed a claim a couple years before with the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission. That was the body that had been set up to review cases of people who said they'd been tortured by police. The commission found sufficient evidence he had been tortured, and they referred his claim back to the very same court that had sent him to prison. So it's not over, but it's a chance. In 2016, he and his attorneys laid out their evidence in a circuit court hearing. Two officers who interrogated James back in 1989 pleaded the fifth in that hearing. For more than three years, his case ping ponged back and forth between the circuit court and appellate court. A judge eventually ordered a new trial. And then on April 26, 2019, all charges against him were dismissed and James Gibson walked free. He eventually got something else besides his freedom, A certificate of innocence from a judge. Given all the work that you've put in, what did it feel like when you finally got your certificate of innocence?

[James Gibson]

It was like I didn't have no feelings, you know, I'm institutionalized. I'm not working with no feelings and emotions, you know what I'm saying? They done conditioned me to be like this. I feel disrespected, you know what I'm saying? I've been fighting so long, I'm still swinging. I've been punched drunk, you know, they had me for 98 hours. I still carry scars on my body 36 years later. I sweat in the middle of the night every night at 3 o' clock because they held the door up on me for five years in the wintertime where I had to plug my ears up and nose up with toilet paper because roaches were so deep in there you can hear them and smell them. Then you talk about how I feel.

[Omar Jimenez]

The thing about overturning a wrongful conviction is that it's never a simple win. And for others, it doesn't feel like a win at all. All of the stories of torture related to John Burge started with a brutal crime. So what happens when a crime victim's family finds out that the story the cops had always told them about their loved one's murder, the closure they thought they had, is gone? Let's go back to the crime at the beginning of this story. Two men, a mechanic and insurance salesman, shot dead outside a garage on the south side of Chicago on a freezing day in 1989. One of those men, the insurance salesman, was Lloyd Benjamin. He left behind a family.

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

You know, growing up, my dad was like my best friend. He taught me everything I knew about sports. And we were like, you know, best buddies.

[Omar Jimenez]

Bill Benjamin is the only son of Lloyd Benjamin. Just as that December day is seared in James memory, it's also seared in bills. He was 33 years old when his dad was killed.

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

I remember that it was cold, like minus 20 or minus 30 out. I was over at a friend's house, and my mother knew where I was, so she called my friend, and I guess she told him what had happened. And she said, don't tell him what happened.

[Omar Jimenez]

Somebody had shot his dad two times in the head outside Hunter Wash's garage. He died there.

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

My mom begged my dad not to go out that day because it was so cold. It was right before Christmas, and, you know, never came home. Every Christmas, you know, supposed to be a celebration. Not to me anymore. So it was just. It was heartbreaking.

[Omar Jimenez]

Bill said police were confident they were on the right track with their investigation.

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

They said they think they had the guy. They're just waiting on a few things. And they finally came through and said, yep, and, yeah, we got him.

[Omar Jimenez]

We got him. They were talking about James Gibson. Bill was in the courtroom for James's bench trial. He believed James had killed his dad. And seeing James get life in prison, it gave Bill a kind of comfort.

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

I was happy when he got convicted.

[Omar Jimenez]

He said he still believes James is guilty.

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

For them all to say that they were all tortured by Burch, I doubt it. I highly doubt it. Maybe a few of them were, and then everybody else just got on their coattails, and now everybody's free. I know everybody's all happy. All the families are happy. What about the victims families? I'll bet you none of them are happy. I know I'm not.

[Omar Jimenez]

You know, you feel that James Gibson definitely did this, that he's sort of wrongfully out of prison. And I'm gonna ask you this, not to sort of disrespect your conviction there, but I just wonder for you in your reflection, did you ever consider that he might not have done this?

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

I mean, it's crossed my mind. I don't believe that to be the case, but it's crossed my mind. Do I know for positive that he pulled the trigger? No. Quite honestly, no, I don't. I believe that, but I don't know that for a fact.

[Omar Jimenez]

Does it bother you at all that the guilt that you believe James is guilty of, for lack of a better word, was tarred by the behavior of police in handling what would have been a suspect at the time?

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

I'm sure that some. Some people were tortured. That's not. I'm not condoning that, that's for sure. But I don't know. It's hard to tell who was and who wasn't. It just ruins the whole investigation. When stuff like that happens, it shouldn't happen. And I. Yeah, I blame Burch for that, for sure.

[Omar Jimenez]

There's too much blame to go around, not enough places for it to land. Now.

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

If he didn't, then who did? And I think about that every day.

[Omar Jimenez]

In the spring of 2019, a couple weeks after he finally walked free, James Gibson sued the city of Chicago for wrongful conviction. His legal fight wasn't over.

[James Gibson]

I'm a warrior. I've been fighting and being denied. I've been the appellate court, the supreme court, the circuit court, appeals, the seventh circuit, the United States rid of sanctuary, the federal court, the post convictions, commutations, you know what I'm saying? I've been in the court system since 1990, you know what I'm saying? And so I don't know how to do nothing else but to fight.

[Omar Jimenez]

He's tried to make up for what was lost. He's reconnected with family. He started a nonprofit, the Clara and James Gibson foundation, to draw attention to the stories of people who are wrongfully convicted of crimes. And as he tried to rebuild his life, he kept fighting the city and the courts. When I first met James this spring, he still didn't know what a resolution to his case would look like at that point. It had been almost six years since he'd sued the city. Then in June, his lawyer called me with news. The city of Chicago proposed a settlement, and that settlement would be up for a vote at the next city council meeting. It's a Wednesday in June. 10am Outside, it's cloudy and humid. I'd flown to Chicago the day before and met James Gibson in person for what was the first time at that point. Now he's dressed in a tailored blue suit. He's sitting in the Chicago city Council chambers, in the gallery on the edge of his seat, watching the city council make its way through its agenda. And if you've ever sat through a city council meeting, they've always got a long agenda. I see James Gibson's name on the meeting agenda. James Gibson versus the city of Chicago. Underneath that, in bold type, is an amount. $14.75 million. It's listed under three other settlements approved by the city's finance committee, and it's the biggest one by far. The chair of the finance committee rattles off other agenda items. Then she gets to the settlements. James Gibson's is last.

[Flint Taylor]

In the case of James Gibson versus.

[Omar Jimenez]

City of Chicago, et al, in the amount of $14,750,000. I move passage of this item by.

[Lawrence Ralph]

The same motion, hearing no objections, seeing no hands, so ordered.

[Omar Jimenez]

Item number 12 is the communication. The meeting just moves on. Business as usual. I look over at James. I can't interpret the look on his face. And his lawyer, Andrew M. Stroth, is whispering in his ear. We'd put a mic on him before the meeting started, and I wonder if it'll capture what he's feeling in this huge moment. But it all happens so fast. James lawyer is now hustling him out of the room, telling him, all right, that's it. Right outside the council chambers, James and his lawyer said a few words. Then I watched James go over to a corner. It seemed like it was all sinking in. He took a moment for himself.

[James Gibson]

I'm here, Mama.

[Omar Jimenez]

I'm here.

[James Gibson]

I'm here, Mama.

[Omar Jimenez]

I'm mate.

[James Gibson]

I'm here, Mama. I'm here.

[Omar Jimenez]

I'm here, Mama.

[James Gibson]

They couldn't break me. They couldn't break me, Mama. I'm here. I'm here, Mama. I'm here, Mom. Nigger.

[Omar Jimenez]

We keep coming back to the numbers in this story. 130, at least. That's the number of documented cases of torture by John Burge or detectives under him. At least 119 million. After combing through city records, that's the dollar amount we totaled up has been paid out in the last 25 years in settlements, verdicts, and reparations to people who were tortured by Burge or the Midnight Crew. And there are other victims not related to Burge. According to one alderman, there are 200 wrongful conviction cases still pending in Chicago. And then there are the numbers that we're left with at the end of James story. A $14.75 million settlement, 29 years, 3 months and 19 days served in prison. Those dollars are never going to outweigh that lost time. And to James Gibson, that scale of justice will never feel balanced.

[James Gibson]

Somebody called me and said, congratulations. You should be happy. You rich now. And I'm like, how am I be rich in something? When I lost my mother, my father, I ain't never had a chance to be married. My mother's gone. There's no glue to hold us together. I mean, how should I be happy about that? All the money in the world can't replace my happiness, my peace, my loss. I lost everything. You know what I'm saying? I lost everything. So how do you replace that?

[Omar Jimenez]

Weigh that scale with the other side. Three years, eight months and 12 days. That's the amount of time John Burge spent in prison. When I set out to make this series, I wanted to answer a question that I'd been turning over for years, ever since I learned about this story. It's a question that's at the bottom of that stack of numbers. The question the numbers can't answer. And it's a question I asked just about everybody I interviewed. What should justice look like in this case? A lot of the people I talk to have thought about this question longer and harder than I have. Some, like attorney Flint Taylor, feel like the years of legal battles and protests delivered a real victory and that Burge faced real consequences.

[Flint Taylor]

He was fired. He was exiled to Florida. He ended up being reviled, being notorious. That the narrative had changed. That's what's so important.

[Omar Jimenez]

Other people, when I ask them this question, I can hear them reaching for an answer that's going to satisfy them. Me, anybody? Here's Betsy Biffle, the prosecutor.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

I don't know. I don't think paying someone millions of dollars to spend their entire adult life in prison makes up for it. I don't, you know, for the civil suits that are still ongoing, I don't think that the 54 month sentence he got in this case made up for what the five victims who testified went through. But I don't know. I don't know what it looks like at this point.

[Omar Jimenez]

And Lawrence Ralph, the torture expert, I.

[Lawrence Ralph]

Don'T think there can be justice on an individual level. I think the missing piece from the city's part is a dimension that makes the police department itself accountable. We have to think about ways to reduce the police imprint and I think that will necessarily reduce the kinds of damages that are inflicted on the community in the name of police violence. That's the missing piece that brings us closer to justice.

[Omar Jimenez]

Bill Benjamin, the son of the person Gibson was accused of killing.

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

That's a tough question. I mean, we thought we had justice and now there's question marks. Obviously, I don't think there is any right now. Not for my family anyway.

[Omar Jimenez]

All this time later, there is still a web of people trying to unwind themselves from the mangled mess of what was determined for them to, to be justice. It was storming the day James Gibson got his settlement. That was the real thunder that day, by the way. We left City hall together and drove to Inglewood, his old neighborhood.

[James Gibson]

I get a blessing it rains. It'd be my mama.

[Omar Jimenez]

What do you think she would say if she could see you now to see where you've ended up? To see what you've been able to do.

[James Gibson]

She would say, stop all that other stuff. Stop all that extra stuff and have some class, more class. It seemed like it was just yesterday. It's been 20 something years. Every moment, every day, she would want me to let it go. I'm still working on it, Mom. I'm still working on it. I'm still working on that part.

[Omar Jimenez]

Tortured justice was produced by Graylin Brashear, Madeline Thompson, Emily Williams, Kira Dehring, Sophia Sanchez and Lauren Kim. The series editor was Lacey Roberts. Our technical director is Dan Zazula. The executive producer of CNN podcasts is Steve Lichti. We had production help from Jake Sorgan, Joe Dissolt, David Guggenheim, Jessica Popovac, Miriam Annenberg and Jordan Gizzardo. Special thanks to Haley Thomas, Robert Mathers, Alex Manasseri, Joe Parker, Kate Carroll, Emma Lacey Bordeaux, and Frank Lamont and Furlan Webster Jr. And Ed Kelly, the actors whose voices you heard in episode two. We'd also like to thank the Chicago Police torture archive. A lot of people have devoted a lot of time and effort to uncovering this story and sharing it with the world. Two of them were in this podcast. Their original reporting and fact finding over decades was essential to this series even happening in the first place. Journalist John Conroy and civil rights attorney Flint Taylor. I'm Omar Jimenez. Thanks for listening.

[James Gibson / Bill Benjamin / John Burge (various voices)]

News fatigue. Have I Got News for you? Is the cure and also the disease. CNN's Comedy Quiz show is back, making sense of the mayhem and definitely adding to it. Have I Got News for you? Saturday at 9 on CNN.