Activists demand Gov. Pritzker grant clemency for survivors of police torture

Chicago, IL- A dozen protesters gathered on Friday, September 19 outside the 50th Anniversary Gala of the Illinois Humanities nonprofit, a celebration for which Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker had been named an honorary co-chair. The protesters rallied and chanted to demand that Pritzker use his executive power to grant clemency for hundreds of petitioners with credible claims of police torture and wrongful conviction.

The protest was organized by the Campaign to Free Incarcerated Survivors of Police Torture, a campaign of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR). Pritzker is a primary target of the CFIST campaign because he has the power to free hundreds of torture survivors, and he has presented himself as a progressive by speaking out against Trump and through association with nonprofits like Illinois Humanities.

Pritzker is aware of the legacy of police torture in Chicago, having commuted the sentence of Gerald Reed, a survivor of torture at the hands of the infamous torture cop Jon Burge. But he hasn’t acted on the pile of clemency petitions on his desk, hundreds of which were written by survivors of torture.

“It don’t make sense for him to have the power with a stroke of his pen to free these people, and yet he does nothing,” said Patricia Williams, a co-chair of CAARPR. “That was one of the first things he promised us, that he was going to pardon those people who were wrongfully imprisoned.”

“I’m calling on the governor to have a heart and stop wasting taxpayers’ dollars keeping people behind bars who are innocent,” said Mark Clements, a survivor of police torture and leader at the Chicago Torture Justice Center. Clements was tortured by Chicago police in 1981 and received a settlement from the city of Chicago as a result of his wrongful conviction.

“There are people who have been locked up for 41 years, and none of their sentences are being commuted,” said Clayborn Smith, who spent 31 years in a maximum security prison as a result of a confession extracted through torture. While incarcerated, Smith submitted a claim to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (TIRC), the only body of its kind in the country, which was created to assess claims of torture and decide whether they merit judicial review.

The TIRC found Smith’s case to be credible in 2013, but it took another ten years for him to be released from what he described as “the egregious, horrific nightmare that the Chicago machine put us through.”

Smith urged the governor to use his power to grant clemency for torture survivors who remain incarcerated, before it’s too late for them, stating, “I could have been one of the many torture victims that died in prison waiting for some justice.”

Protesters chanted “Brick by brick, wall by wall, free our loved ones! Free them all!” as passersby and gala attendees stopped to express support and learn more.

#ChicagoIL #IL #InJusticeSystem #PoliceCrimes #CAARPR #CFIST #TIRC #Torture