https://themilitant.com/2020/02/22/chicago-judge-throws-out-gerald-reeds-acquittal/
Chicago judge throws out Gerald Reed’s acquittal
article
BY JOHN HAWKINS
Vol. 84/No. 8
March 2, 2020
CHICAGO — In December 2018, Cook County Judge Thomas Gainer overturned
Gerald Reed’s 1991 conviction on murder charges, ruling his “confession”
had been
extracted through torture. Still Reed languished in jail, because
prosecutors objected to his release prior to a new trial.
In a new blow to Reed and to the Bill of Rights, Circuit Court Judge
Thomas Hennelly flat out reversed Gainer’s ruling Feb. 14 and ordered
Reed to serve
the remainder of a life sentence. Hennelly was assigned to take over
Reed’s case after Gainer retired.
The nearly 80 family members and supporters of Reed who were at the
hearing, expecting to hear when a new trial would begin, were stunned by
the judge’s
decision.
Hennelly not only brushed aside Gainer’s quashing of Reed’s conviction,
but called into question the findings of the Illinois Torture Inquiry
and Relief
Commission that statements by Reed that were used to convict him were
gotten through torture. The torturers were detectives who worked under
notorious
Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge.
In 2012, the commission found that cops had beaten Reed so badly that
they broke a metal rod in his right leg and knee, put in after an
earlier fracture.
But Hennelly insinuated the torture claims were fake and characterized
Reed’s decadeslong fight to clear his name as merely an attempt to
“ghost ride”
on similar brutality proven against Burge and his henchmen.
Chanting “Free Gerald Reed,” Reed’s supporters marched to the lobby of
the Leighton Criminal Court building where they spoke to reporters.
“I never would have thought that this judge would do what he did today,”
Reed’s mother, Armanda Shackelford, told the press. “This disregard for
the lives
of the victims of police torture has got to stop.”
“The era of Jon Burge is not over, the cover-up continues,” said Aislinn
Pulley, co-executive director of the Chicago Torture Justice Center. “If
they
were really about justice, Gerald Reed would be free today.”
Reed’s attorney, Elliot Zinger, challenged Hennelly’s assertion that
Gainer’s decision barred only a verbal statement to detectives, not the
written confession.
“Where does it come from that Gerald’s right to a new trial has
evaporated, and now he’s basically called a perjurer and sent back to
the penitentiary?”
Special Prosecutor Robert Milan backed the judge’s decision, claiming
that there is other “extensive” evidence that Reed is guilty.
Mark Clements, himself a police torture survivor who spent 28 years
behind bars and is now with the Torture Justice Center, told the
Militant, “If someone
is forced to confess and that confession is used to convict them, then
the entire prosecution is tainted and the defendant should receive a new
trial.”
Family members and supporters of Reed plan to continue the fight for his
release for as long as it takes.
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Sam Harris
“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen
yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence
as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell
him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who
will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every
incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what
so ever.”
― Sam Harris,
