Politics
Pay $15.4M to Man Who Spent 33 Years in Prison for Double Murder He Didn’t Commit: City Lawyers
(WTTW News)
Chicago taxpayers should pay $15.4 million to a man who spent 33 years in prison after being convicted of a 1987 double murder he didn’t commit, city lawyers recommended.
For nearly four decades, Robert Smith has said he was tortured by Chicago police detectives trained by Jon Burge, a disgraced former Chicago police commander. Dozens of lawsuits and complaints alleging physical abuse have been filed against detectives trained by Burge, who city officials admit tortured and beat more than 100 Black men during his career.
Smith’s lawyers were prepared to argue at trial that unearthed Chicago Police Department records show then-Lt. Philip Cline lied under oath when he testified he took Smith’s confession that he killed his mother-in-law, Edith Yeager, 55, and grandmother-in-law, Willie Bell Alexander, 87, in their Roseland home on Sept. 19, 1987, and set it on fire.
Cline went on to serve as Chicago police superintendent under former Mayor Richard M. Daley from 2003 to 2007, when he retired under fire as a video of an off-duty officer beating a female bartender triggered a massive scandal.
Cline will collect an annual pension of at least $203,000 every year for the rest of his life, records show. Cline’s pension is the largest flowing to any retired police officer, records show.
Since his retirement as the city’s top cop, Cline has been the executive director of the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation, which is dedicated to honoring the memory of police officers killed in the line of duty and helping their families.
Cline did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WTTW News, but in March 2022 he told the Chicago Tribune and Illinois Answers Project that if Smith “gets a dime, it’s a miscarriage of justice.”
The City Council’s Finance Committee will consider resolving the lawsuit Smith filed in 2021 on Thursday. A final vote by the City Council could come on Dec. 10.
If approved, it would bring the total amount spent by taxpayers in 2025 to compensate those wrongfully convicted based on evidence developed by Chicago police officers to $204.6 million, according to a WTTW News analysis.
No physical evidence linked Smith, a veteran of the Vietnam War, to the double murder.
During an interrogation that lasted 19 hours, Smith said he was beaten and kicked by officers and had his wallet and handkerchief stuffed into his mouth, causing him to choke. Smith said officers verbally abused him, using racial slurs and insulting his wife, who was then pregnant with his child, according to his lawsuit.
After Cline promised to get him medical attention, Smith confessed to the crime.
Smith’s lawsuit alleges that after Smith confessed, Cline and other police officers framed him for the murders by taking a pair of his underwear and a sheet and dipping it in blood left at the scene of the murders. The sheet was never presented as evidence at Smith’s trial.
At the time of Smith’s arrest in 1987, Burge had already been accused of abusing people accused of crimes. Cline took over Burge’s squad of detectives who have been named in dozens of lawsuits alleging misconduct.
Accused of running a torture ring for years at CPD’s Area 2 headquarters, Burge was eventually suspended and fired in the early 1990s. While the former commander was convicted on obstruction and perjury charges, he was never tried on any of the torture allegations. Burge died in 2018.
Even though Cline testified Smith confessed to him, CPD records show that Cline was not on duty on the day Smith confessed to killing his mother- and grandmother-in-law, according to Smith’s lawsuit.
The other officers who testified they took Smith’s confession were former detectives William Pederson and Robert Rice. Rice is dead, and Pederson pleaded guilty to selling confidential records from government databases and spent 15 months in prison.
After Smith was convicted of both murders, Cook County prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Smith to death. The judge instead sentenced Smith to life in prison, citing his service in the Army and the lack of any evidence that he had a motive to kill his wife’s mother and grandmother.
In 2013, the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission, charged with investigating allegations against Burge and other officers, found Smith’s claims of abuse credible and determined that the case against him, which relied nearly entirely on his confession, was “wholly circumstantial and very weak.”
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s office agreed to vacate Smith’s conviction in October 2020, and he was granted a certificate of innocence soon after.
Despite that, lawyers for the city fiercely defended Cline and the other officers named in Smith’s lawsuit, arguing that Smith was actually guilty and his abuse allegations were false, court records show.
WTTW News' Jared Rutecki contributed to this report.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
