In 1992, Clayborn Smith’s grandfather and great aunt were murdered. Several days later, Chicago Police Department (CPD) officers took him to CPD Area 1 Headquarters where he testified that he was abused, threatened, and forced to confess to the murders by Detectives Kenneth Boudreau, John Halloran, and James O’Brien. Though he filed a motion to suppress his confession, the presiding judge did not believe his allegations of abuse and denied the motion. The judge admitted his confession at trial and convicted him.
In the years following Clayborn’s confession and conviction, we learned that the three detectives were accused of torturing dozens of other men into confessing and that all three had worked under the infamous Commander Burge, who oversaw “the nation’s longest running police brutality scandal” and was ultimately convicted for lying under oath about torturing people.
While many of those who survived torture by Burge and his subordinates were exonerated and released from prison, Clayborn continues to languish behind bars.
Recently, however, the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (TIRC) looked into Clayborn’s case and determined that there was “sufficient evidence of torture” to conclude that his claim was credible and merited judicial review. It thus referred the case to the circuit court.
Upon receiving the case from TIRC and conducting an evidentiary hearing, the circuit court rejected Clayborn’s claim for a new suppression hearing. Despite the overwhelming evidence, it held that Clayborn failed to “establish conclusively that the officers involved in [his] interrogation participated in systemic abuse.”
We litigated the appeal and secured a reversal of the trial decision. Clayborn will finally have a new suppression hearing before a new judge.