The Torture Machine

January 15, 2019
A founding partner of the Chicago-based People's Law Office recounts his career fighting on behalf of victims of police malfeasance, especially torture and wrongful death."If the torture machine teaches one lesson above all, it is that torture is as American as apple pie," writes Taylor, whose long career is a catalog of hard-fought battles for racial justice waged in Chicago's courtrooms. In this personal narrative, Taylor offers no introductions or preludes, plunging straight into the heart of the beast: a morass of police corruption and conspiracy dating back to the December 1969 assassinations of Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Discussing his arrival on the scene of what authorities were selling as a police raid gone wrong, the author writes, "shock and grief soon met with the dawning realization that the police claims of a shootout were bold-faced lies. We were looking at a murder scene." Thus begins the harrowing tale of the author's 13-year crusade with the PLO "to uncover and expose the truth about that murderous raid." The author also chronicles the next three decades spent seeking justice for survivors of a conspiracy of brutal torture carried out by police during their investigations. Sparing no details, Taylor reveals the police force's reign of terror and the Gestapo-like interrogation tactics administered by Lt. Jon Burge and his squad of "confederates." For 20 years, using a variety of tactics, including suffocation, pistol-whipping, and electric shock--all under a cloak of secrecy--Burge and company beat confessions from dozens of victims. The author uncovers stories of secret files, a code of silence among police officers, and complicity among politicians, and he shows how he and the PLO worked for years to free prisoners whose incarcerations were based on torture confessions while winning "more than $35,000,000 in settlements, verdicts, and reparations for more than sixty torture survivors."Taylor illuminates in graphic detail the scars caused by some of the worst elements of law enforcement in a city perpetually beset by violence.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from December 15, 2018
When the People's Law Office (PLO), which Taylor founded, took up the legal challenge to the 1969 killing of Chicago Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark by the FBI, it set in motion nearly 50 years of challenging questionable law enforcement practices. In this compelling book, Taylor details the high-profile Black Panther case and the 31 years the PLO pursued another notorious situation, the use of torture by Chicago police to secure false confessions. The legal pursuit of Chicago police detective Jon Burge and his accomplices crossed paths with the ambitions of Chicago politicians, including mayors Jane Byrne and Richard M. Daley. Taylor chronicles the winding course of the investigation and prosecution, including conflicts with a biased judge, surreptitious help from a police officer PLO dubbed Deep Badge, and the unveiling of the police practice of street files, unofficial reports not made available to defense attorneys as required by the U.S. Constitution, files that might have exonerated the accused. Through a long series of attempts in a quest that gathered more and more accusers, the PLO steadily built a case that ultimately triumphed with numerous exonerations and a far-reaching influence on international human rights.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)