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Washington’s narrow 1983 victory over opponent Bernard Epton came after he won the primary after vanquishing incumbent mayor Jane Byrne in an earlier primary. Washington’s climb to the mayoral post was preceded by a life of service, culminating into a long and rich political career.

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Washington was a true native son, born to his father Roy, a police captain and lawyer, and mother Bertha, a singer. Washington was raised in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, once considered the nucleus of Black culture in the city. A budding track star in high school, Washington never completed his studies and instead dropped out just short of graduating. After some odd jobs, Washington was drafted by the military in 1942 during the height of World War II. While stationed in the Philippines, Washington balanced fighting for his country with standing proud in face of the racism he faced all the while.

Shortly after his military tenure, Washington enrolled in Roosevelt College (now University) in 1946. While attending, Washington became entrenched in school activities and became a vocal proponent of racial balance. Graduating from the school in 1949, he then entered the Northwestern University School Of Law, the only black student in his class. Upon his graduation in 1952, Washington’s political career would begin to take hold. Washington worked for 3^rd ward leader Ralph Metcalfe, a former Olympic athlete. Washington would organize young democrats across the city, fighting for a number of issues that affected Blacks in the wards where African-Americans lived.

Washington was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1965 after a controversial bid by a set of Black candidates was thrown out on a technicality. Washington would receive a high level of support but faced a tough time working for the state. He was criticized by the very people he tried to assist, yet he fought tirelessly for civil rights. Washington also managed to successfully help pass a bill to make Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday a state holiday, although his initial attempts were vetoed earlier in his career.

Moving to the Illinois Senate in 1977, Washington would routinely battle “The Machine” – historically known as the “Chicago Democratic Machine.” While working to pass the Illinois Human Rights Act of 1980, Washington was met with resistance from the Machine. He was assisted by Hyde Park political activist Carol Mosley Braun, who would go on to become the only African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

In 1980, Washington was elected to U.S. House of Representatives. His major coup during his time in the House was working to extend the Voting Rights Act, speaking openly against tactics that suppressed Black votes.

With his position in Congress firmly held, Washington would take aim at Chicago’s highest seat in 1983. The victory did much to erase racial lines in the divided city, as Washington’s “man of the people” speaking style helped to ease the fears of white voters and other critics. Washington had opponents at every turn, including Richard Daley who was then the State’s Attorney General.

As mayor, the city’s minorities supported Washington outright, although a group of council members known as “the Eddies” tried to head off every motion from the mayor. White Democrats resisted Washington at every turn, but the mayor wisely catered to the growing Latino population and continued to represent African-Americans fairly as possible.

Shortly after winning re-election in 1987, Washington suffered a massive heart attack while at his desk. On the morning for November 25, paramedics would be called to City Hall in an attempt to revive the mayor. Later that afternoon, Washington was pronounced dead. His wake was attended by thousands of supporters as the city dealt with the shock of losing the beloved leader.

All around Chicago today, Washington’s influence is still felt. The massive Harold Washington Library Center was a fitting tribute given the mayor’s reported love of books. The Loop College was renamed Harold Washington College in his honor. Several building and institutions around the city changed their name to reflect Washington’s name.

President Obama has gone on record to say that he was influenced by Washington, which prompted his move to the city to work as a community organizer. Calling the mayor “larger-than-life,” the President recognized Washington as an inspiration not only to himself, but to other African-Americans nationwide.

To learn more about Harold Washington and his legacy, click here.

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Rev. Addie Wyatt

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The trailblazing Wyatt, who died of undisclosed illness two days after being admitted to Advocate Trinity Hospital, spent her life fighting against gender and racial discrimination in the workplace.

She was an integral participant and leader in the major Civil Rights marches and her adept ability to organize was employed by six presidents, according to an ABC 7 Chicago news report.

For example, Eleanor Roosevelt even selected her to serve on President John F. Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women.

Born in March 28, 1924, in Brookhaven, Miss., Wyatt moved to Chicago in 1930 and married Claude S. Wyatt Jr. in 1940. By 1955, she became an ordained pastor and cofounded Vernon Park Church of God on Chicago’s South Side with her husband who died last April after 69 years of marriage.

But Wyatt’s commitment to social justice will perhaps be her most lasting legacy as she parlayed a meatpacking plant job into rising through the union ranks to become the first female vice president of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America.

She was also a founder of the National Organization for Women. And Wyatt and her husband often marched with Dr. Mart Luther King Jr. who later commissioned her to help start Operation Breadbasket, a program operating in 12 cities that helped distribute food. The organization later grew into the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, according to a UPI report.

In 1975, TIME named her one of the magazine’s “Women of the Year.”

Maude McKay, 74, the Rev. Wyatt’s sole surviving sibling, told the Chicago Sun-Times:

“She always believed in being fair and honest, and she stood for what was right. She just couldn’t take injustice.”

Watch this ABC 7 Chicago news video about her life and legacy:

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Brett Johnson is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based writer and the founder of the music and culture blog VeryArtistical.com.

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About 200 people, including his widow Rhoda McCullough, daughter Je’Niece McCullough and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, gathered Tuesday on a corner near the home where he grew up.

Je’Niece McCullough says she hopes renaming the street Bernie Mac Street reminds people “they can do whatever they want to do in life.”

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Mac, born Bernard McCullough, died in August 2008 at age 50 from pneumonia complications, after suffering from sarcoidosis, an autoimmune disease.

The comedian is best known for his stand-up performance in the Original Kings of Comedy, a tour that showcased several popular contemporary black comedians, and the hit comedy series “The Bernie Mac Show.”

The reason, administrators say, is that students have learned there is a price to pay — literally — for breaking even the smallest rules.

Noble Network of Charter Schools charges students at its 10 Chicago high schools $5 for detentions stemming from infractions that include chewing gum and having untied shoelaces. Last school year it collected almost $190,000 in discipline “fees” from detentions and behavior classes — a policy drawing fire from some parents, advocacy groups and education experts.

Officials at the rapidly expanding network, heralded by Mayor Rahm Emanuel as a model for the city, say the fees offset the cost of running the detention program and help keep small problems from becoming big ones. Critics say Noble is nickel-and-diming its mostly low-income students over insignificant, made-up infractions that force out kids administrators don’t want.

“We think this just goes over the line … fining someone for having their shoelaces untied (or) a button unbuttoned goes to harassment, not discipline,” said Julie Woestehoff, executive director of the Chicago advocacy group Parents United for Responsible Education, which staged protests last week over the policy after Woestehoff said she was approached by an upset parent

Students at Noble schools receive demerits for various infractions — four for having a cellphone or one for untied shoelaces. Four demerits within a two-week period earn them a detention and $5 fine. Students who get 12 detentions in a year must attend a summer behavior class that costs $140.

Superintendent Michael Milkie said the policy teaches the kids — overwhelmingly poor, minority and often hoping to be the first in their families to attend college — to follow rules and produces in a structured learning environment. He points to the network’s average ACT score of 20.3, which is higher than at the city’s other non-selective public schools, and says more than 90 percent of Noble graduates enroll in college.

While fights can be an almost daily occurrence in some urban high schools, Milkie says there’s only about one a year on each Noble campus.

By “sweating the small stuff … we don’t have issues with the big stuff,” he said.

Milkie said the fines also help defray the cost of administering after-school detention and the salary of the network’s dean of discipline, which otherwise would divert money intended for education.

But Donna Moore said the district is manufacturing problems that lead to unproductive badgering of students, including her 16-year-old son, who had to repeat ninth grade at Noble’s Gary Comer College Prep after racking up 33 detentions and several suspensions.”It was nothing egregious, but just that the little things added up: a shirt unbuttoned, shoes not tied, not tracking the teacher with his eyes,” said Moore, adding that her son has an attention disorder. “It’s not normal to treat a young adult as a 2-year-old … kids internalize that.”

Woestehoff and Moore said some families have removed their children from Noble schools because they couldn’t keep paying the fees, though Moore said her biggest complaint is the infractions. Milkie said Noble sets up payment plans and on rare occasions waives the fees, and students never would be held back a grade solely because they couldn’t pay.

Even so, Matthew Mayer, a professor in the graduate school of education at Rutgers University, said a monetary fine is “highly inappropriate” because it likely has no bearing on students’ academic performance and disproportionately hurts poor families.

“It’s almost medieval in nature. It’s a form a financial torture, for lack of a better term,” Mayer said.

Emanuel defended the school, saying it gets “incredible” results and parents don’t have to send their children there. Charter schools are exempt from most district policies.

Parent Tammy O’Neal said her two daughters are excelling at Noble’s Muchin College Prep, and only one ever got detention, for not wearing a belt.

“If a kid is prone to getting in trouble and not taking school seriously, then (the fines are) a steep slope,” she said. “But why don’t you tell your kid to straighten up?”

Chadie Morris, 16, a sophomore at Noble Street College Prep, carries a 3.8 grade-point average at Noble Street College Prep, but figures she has paid $45 already this year for such things as talking in class.

“Sometimes it can be about the littlest things and you can still get demerits,” she said. “Demerits are horrible; detentions are horrible.”

But the aspiring lawyer, who struggled with absences until her adviser and principal persuaded her to come back, looks forward to attending a one-week summer college program.

Other charter school operators in Chicago and elsewhere said they don’t fine students but respect Noble’s academic success and its right to adopt its own discipline policy.

Tim King, CEO of Urban Prep Academies, which operates three high schools for boys in some of Chicago’s toughest and poorest neighborhoods, said he believes “very firmly in a more therapeutic or restorative approach vs. punitive toward student conduct.”

Every student in Urban Prep’s first two graduating classes was accepted to a college or university.

At Knowledge is Power Program, a network of 109 charter schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia, middle school students are rewarded for good behavior with a weekly incentive “paycheck” — fake money that can be redeemed at the school store or used to defray the cost of field trip, spokesman Steve Mancini said. The system is phased out by high school because it’s no longer needed.

Milkie, though, doesn’t plan to change a thing.

“It’s a beautiful system,” he said. “I don’t want to brag, but it is. It’s why the kids are so successful.

Police Chief Garry McCarthy told the Tribune that there have been 40 murders this month in the Windy City, up from 26 in January of 2011. According to police records, the increase in homicides continues the same violent streak that held the city hostage at the end of last year.

McCarthy shared the tragic details of the crime wave that has ushered in 2012:

We’re at 73 percent murder-by-gunshot right now, which means that the other categories have stacked up…stabbings, asphyxiation.

Former White House Chief-of-Staff and current mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel, says that gang activity is at the crux of the city’s problems:

Chicago has a problem unlike any other major city given the size of our gangs.  Nobody can be content, but we are making progress in the right things that are necessary to bring a level of safety to our streets.”

Over half of the murders occurred in two of Chicago’s most notorious districts, Englewood and Harrison, but McCarthy that says that targeted strategy in those locations will ensure an improvement in safety.

Read more at The Chicago Tribune

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The cat survived the kicking and officers brought it to an animal care facility.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

The officers immediately arrested a laughing 22-year-old Percy Love of the 6500 block of South Maplewood Avenue after the Monday afternoon kick of the small black cat, police said.

He told the arresting officers: “This is my cat, Nightmare. He is tough, we play like that all the time. It’s just a cat,” police said.

Read More At The Chicago Sun-Times

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Police say the attack happened Sunday in a South Side alley. Video shows several assailants repeatedly kicking and striking the victim, sometimes with a shoe. The video was posted on YouTube.

Police say they robbed the victim of shoes and his wallet.

Chicago police said Tuesday that it didn’t appear the incident was racially motivated.

Authorities say the victim is of Asian descent. In the video, the assailants can be heard repeatedly using racial slurs(n-word) and making derogatory comments about speaking Chinese. Several assailants are wearing sweat shirt hoods and masks.

The victim was hospitalized for a laceration, bruising and abrasions.

No charges have been filed.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Most of the offenders visible in the video appeared to be white. The victim was later treated for bruises, abrasions and a cut lip at Mercy Hospital and released.

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Of course, you can attend a local parade today.

However, there are also concerts, special movie screenings, prayer services and many other volunteer efforts to join so you can add an educational, service and even spiritual element to however you’re planning to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy.

If you’re looking for ways to make today more than just a day off work, we’ve compiled a list of some of what’s happening in 13 major markets.

1. ATLANTA

If you’re in the Peachtree city, you can attend the King Holiday March and Rally. The march is held on Auburn Avenue from Peachtree Street to Jackson Street while the rally is held on Auburn Avenue in the King National Park Area. The areas of concern are education, technology, medical, investment, transportation, housing environmental justice, job creation, conflict resolution, interfaith, cultural exchange, peace, justice and voter registration. 1:15 p.m. Jan. 16. Sweet Auburn District, Auburn Ave N.E., Atlanta. 404-614-3233. In addition, poet Nikki Giovanni will speak and do a free book signing at 2 p.m., as part of Kennesaw State University’s annual MLK Day event at the Bailey Performance Center, 1000 Chastain Road N.W, Kennesaw. 770-423-6650. Visit the official King Week at Emory website for a full list of the school’s King Week activities.

2. BIRMINGHAM

In the Birmingham area, locals can attend the Wreath Laying Ceremony at Dr. King’s Statue at Kelly Ingram Park at 10 a.m. There’s a Martin Luther King Day Parade in Montevallo that starts at 11 a.m. at Montevallo City Hall and will end at Shiloh Baptist Church. Homeless and senior citizens can visit Boutwell Auditorium for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Love Feast at 2:30 p.m. Plus, folks in the area can participate in Hands on Birmingham’s 12th annual MLK Day of Service.Over 35 projects take place around the city from clean-ups, socializing with the elderly, and more. Various locations and times. And there’s free admission all day from 9 to 5 p.m. at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute located at 520 16th Street North.

3. BOSTON

Since King was a former Boston University student, the school will hold its annual remembrance ceremony commemorating his birthday. The event, titled “Manifest Our Destiny,” routinely draws more than 1,000 people from the area. This year’s ceremony will explore “how one person’s passion can transform the world” and will include a lineup of speakers and a jazz performance from BU students. The celebration, which will be broadcast live using BU’s channel on UStream, is open to the public, and will take place at 1 p.m. on Jan. 16 in the George Sherman Union Metcalf Ballroom.

4. CHICAGO

If you’re in the Windy City, Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet is offering an African dance class in commemoration of the holiday and the Bronzeville Children’s Museum in Chicago will have a program featuring crafts. Plus, Chicagoans can get up to speed on the “Rev. Martin Luther King’s pacifist principles” by taking a free daylong course (10 a.m. to 3 p.m.) taught by certified Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies members. For more information, visit evanstonhistorycenter.org. Evanston History Center, Charles Gates Dawes House, 225 Greenwood St (847-475-3410).

5. DETROIT

Over in Detroit, there’s the 2012 Detroit MLK Day  Rally and March: Jobs, Peace & Justice. The event is a tribute to the women of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) that starts at noon at Central United Methodist Church. A march through downtown Detroit follows, with a celebration culminating in the church’s second floor at 23 E. Adams and Woodward. The University of Michigan-Detroit Center (3663 Woodward Ave., Suite 150) is hosting “It’s Going On in the Hood,” a panel discussion from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m focusing on efforts to aid Detroit’s neighborhoods. For more information, visit detroitcenter.umich.edu or call the Detroit Center at (313) 593-3584.

6. HOUSTON

The 18th Annual MLK Grande Parade starts in Mid-Town at San Jacinto St and Elgin Street. For more information about the parade and pre event activities visit www.mlkgrandeparade.org. After the parade, enjoy a day of service with the Harlem Globetrotters at Root Memorial Square Park (1400 Clay Street, Houston. ) from 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

7. LOS ANGELES

Instead of watching the Lakers or Clippers on TV, locals can attend this year’s Kingdom Day Parade. The parade’s theme is ”The Dream Continues to Live and Grow.” Plus, City Year Los Angeles also sponsors a day of service at Los Angeles Academy Middle School where Angelenos can build benches and paint murals. Find more volunteer opportunities at MLKDay.gov.

8. MIAMI

South Florida Urban Ministries celebrates and honors Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with a day of community service. SFLUM staff and a team of AmeriCorps members and other volunteers spend the day beautifying Florida City through several painting and tree planting projects. Additionally, volunteers will help beautify and revitalize four homes in Florida City. Also includes open and closing ceremonies and lunch; 7:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Branches Florida City, 145 SW Fifth Ave., Florida City. Free. 305-442-8306.

9. NEW ORLEANS

In the Big Easy, locals can attend the 25th annual program of the Martin Luther King Jr. Task Force Inc. of Jefferson Parish which includes a 6:45 p.m. banquet at The Four Columns, 3711 West Bank Expressway, Harvey. The theme is “Remember! Celebrate! Act! A Day On … Not a Day Off!” Tickets are $40 per person, and organizers suggest you call soon to reserve seats. Call Clara T. Byes at 504.376.2130 or 504.368.5332.

10. NEW YORK

New Yorkers have lots of options too. Locals can visit “Picture the Dream,” a free exhibit that showcases collages that echo the message of Martin Luther King, Jr., created by children living in Brooklyn public housing. BAMcafé, 30 Lafayette Ave., btwn Ashland Pl. and St. Felix St., Brooklyn. For more info, 718-636-4111. Film buffs can watch a screening of Nothing But a Man, which is playing at the Museum of the Moving Image at 3 p.m. It’s free with $12 museum admission. The film honors the push for civil rights by Martin Luther King, Jr., as it focuses on a 1960s African American railroad worker and his family’s struggle against racism. 36-01 35 Ave., at 37th St., Astoria. For more info, 718-777-6888. And Harlemites can take the Civil Rights Multimedia Walking Tour sponsored by the Harlem Heritage & Cultural Center, 1 p.m. For $25, you can watch a video presentation of Dr. King, visit the hub of Manhattan’s African American community and explore sights related to Martin Luther King, Jr. and other important civil rights figures. 104 Malcolm X Blvd., btwn 115th and 116th sts.

11. OAKLAND

The Allen Temple Leadership Institute with Mayor Jean Quan and City Council President Larry Reid lead the “Green Clean Up Day,” a service event which will target 20 blocks in East Oakland for cleaning, graffiti removal and trash pick up. More than 200 volunteers are expected to participate in the cleanup, which is set to take place between 8:30 a.m. and noon, primarily along International Boulevard between 81st and 98th avenues.

12. SAN FRANCISCO

It’s all about service in San Francisco too. Volunteers plan to meet at the African American Art and Culture Complex today to clean up the Bernal Heights neighborhood. The Department of Public Works is providing transportation, and volunteers will be weeding, landscaping, and cleaning up the area. Volunteers also plan to build two picnic tables, construct and install four bulletin boards, improve the landscaping of a school garden and paint  school railings and lunch tables at John O’Connell High School on San Francisco’s Folsom Street.

13. WASHINGTON, DC

In the nation’s capitol, the must-see event is a performance by Grammy Award winner Bobby McFerrin and the Let Freedom Ring Choir who’ll sing “Let Freedom Ring,” a musical tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. Plus, Clarence Jones, former King attorney and speechwriter will receive the 10th annual John Thompson Legacy of a Dream Award at the Kennedy Center, Concert Hall, 2700 F St. NW. Tickets are free to the 6 p.m. ceremony and are distributed, two per person, to those in line in the Hall of Nations starting a 5 p.m. Monday. 202-467-4600.

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A Rosa Parks-like figure during her era, the journalist and suffragist was so revered that 1930s leaders put her name on a project that promised good, affordable housing for working class families. Within a few decades, however, the homes deteriorated, growing more violent and becoming riddled with gangs and drugs – not as notorious as the city’s Cabrini-Green public housing high rises or Robert Taylor Homes, but certainly not a monument to Wells’ legacy.

Then, nearly a decade ago, the city tore the Wells housing project down, leaving the activist’s great-granddaughter Michelle Duster and her family worried Wells wouldn’t be remembered at all.

Now, to mark the 150th anniversary of Wells’ birth in 2012, an effort is under way to build a sculpture to honor her legacy at the site of the housing development and renew her relevance for future generations.

“When the housing project was coming down we were like `Her name is going to be gone,’” Duster said, sitting in her South Side home, a portrait of her great-grandmother hanging on the wall. “Her name and what she did can’t be lost with the housing project.”

The Ida B. Wells Commemorative Art Committee is seeking $300,000 in donations after commissioning noted Chicago artist Richard Hunt to create the sculpture, which is expected to combine images of Wells with inscriptions of her writings. They have raised a little more than 10 percent of the money so far.

While Wells’ name endures on a grade school and a professorship in the city, the monument will aim to reflect the full legacy of a woman who was born into slavery in Mississippi and went on to become a well-respected crusader against injustice and outspoken anti-lynching activist.

Orphaned at age 16, Wells was left to support her five siblings. She became a teacher and moved to Memphis, where she sued a railroad because she wasn’t allowed to sit in the ladies coach. When she later became a journalist, Wells wrote about that incident and the lynchings of three of her male friends.

Her writings enraged others and led to Wells being forced to leave the South. She kept writing and speaking about lynching across the U.S. and England. She died in 1931 and is buried in Chicago.

Planning for the Ida B. Wells Homes started three years after her death, as a project of the Public Works Administration. The homes opened in 1941 and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited the complex, with its 1,662 units – more than 860 apartments and nearly 800 row houses and garden apartments.

By the 1990s, the housing complex had fallen to drugs and violence. In an infamous 1994 case, two boys, ages 10 and 11, dropped a 5-year-old boy to his death from a vacant 14-floor apartment. The boys were convicted on juvenile murder charges. The same year two neighborhood teenagers produced an award-winning radio documentary “Ghetto Life 101,” which aired on National Public Radio.

A year later, prosecutors charged seven people with running a cocaine ring out of the Ida B. Wells Homes that authorities say did such booming business drug buyers lined up 50 at a time.

By 2002, the last buildings were torn down in a nationally watched urban renewal plan initiated by then-Mayor Richard Daley that also targeted other housing projects – including Cabrini-Green, which saw the last of its high-rises crumble under wrecking balls earlier this year.

As Wells Homes residents focused on finding new places to live, some also requested something be done in tribute to the activist.

“I want people to remember Ida B. Wells the woman, not Ida B. Wells the housing community,” her great-granddaughter, Duster, said. “Something should be done to remember who she was. I think who she was as a woman got lost when it was attached to the housing projects.”

When the money is raised, that something will be a sculpture in the middle of a large grassy median on 37th Street and Langley Avenue in the historically African-American neighborhood of Bronzeville on the city’s South Side.

The site, across the street from a large park, isn’t far from the 19th-century stone house where Wells lived from 1919 to 1929. The Ida B. Wells-Barnett House is now a National Historic Landmark.

Hunt envisions a sculpture in his metallic, free-form style that will incorporate images and writings of Wells. He said he hopes to convey “what a courageous and intelligent and committed person that she was.”

Carol Adams, president of Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African-American History, said the sculpture will be a lasting monument to Wells and a place where people can learn about her influence. The neighborhood is already home to the Ida B. Wells Preparatory Elementary Academy, and Chicago’s DePaul University has a professorship named for Wells.

“Her name itself just reverberates through the community,” said Adams, who once worked in the Ida B. Wells Homes. “It was her voice, her stance that she took regarding lynching and how she used the media to wage that fight, what that fight meant to us. This was very significant for black people all over the country.”

Duster said the sculpture will “have a lot of meaning” for those who lived in the homes named after her.

“I think they will have a huge sense of pride,” she said. “Those who lived in Bronzeville when the homes were there, it’s a source of pride for our neighborhood. For others it’s a sense of pride in the city of Chicago.”

Mostly though, she said, remembering her great-grandmother will teach a new generation that one person can make a difference and defy the boundaries of society’s expectations based on race, class and gender.

“It’s important to speak up when you feel you’ve experienced something not fair,” Duster said. “Don’t wait for somebody else to say something. That’s one thing Ida did that I think is a legacy. She used her voice and talents to raise consciousness.”

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Police spokesman Officer Ron Gaines says Andre Curry is charged with aggravated domestic battery.

Police say Curry apparently posted the photograph on his Facebook page with the words, “This is wut happens wen my baby hits me back.”

The photograph has since been removed but police didn’t have any details about when it was removed.

Curry is to appear in domestic court Wednesday. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he has an attorney.

Kendall Marlowe, spokesman for the Department of Children and Family Services, says the agency has never investigated Curry. He wouldn’t say whether DCFS has interviewed the child or Curry.

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Police say Andre Curr, 21, uploaded the picture to Facebook with the caption “This is wut happens wen my baby hits me back. ;). [sic]”

Curry has not been arrested, according to Chicago police. Child protective services is looking into the situation.

According to the report, one of Curry’s “friends” forwarded the photo to cops.

Je’Vanna Cobbins told The Smoking Gun that Curry would never actually hurt anyone

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The MMA fighter, elusively identified only as “Justin” was relaxing in his car. Miranda who was armed, walked up and began the jack move:

“Justin said he handed over the $30 in cash he had stuffed in a his car’s cup holder, but Miranda was not satisfied, Justin said. At that moment, he backs up the gun and he racks it,” Justin recalled. “The gun jammed. He racked it a second time. He ejected the bullet on the ground. He went down and grabbed the bullet and said, ‘Look, m—–f—–, it’s a hollow point. I’ll blow your brains out.’”

Justin was told to get out of the car. He did as he was instructed and was able to wrestle the gun from Miranda. Then he put hands on him like D-Bo did Red in Friday.

Justin said: “He was begging me to let him go. He said he has a baby.”

Nothing makes me feel better than to see a jacker get jacked! Karma is real.

Read the whole story in the Chicago Sun-Times.

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Scotty Strahan, 18, turned himself in to the police after authorities issued alerts seeking his arrest.

Video posted at worldstarhiphop.com shows the elderly man in a tan jacket wandering around passengers on the CTA platform. In the video, a group of teens is seen laughing and taunting the older man. One teen, dressed in a black vest and hoodie, begins following the older man as the train approaches.

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The effort kicked off this month with Bank of America ads on the 81-year-old Wabash Avenue Bridge, which crosses the Chicago River and has appeared in movies including “About Last Night” and “The Dark Knight.”

“I think it’s disgusting,” Chicago resident Linda Rosenthal said recently, shaking her head as she surveyed the signs. “The architecture in Chicago is stunning. To see this awful advertisement angers me.”

The white ads with blue lettering and Bank of America’s logo are posted on limestone bridge tender houses, which hold the equipment used to raise the bridge when tall boats pass beneath. Bank of America paid $4,500 to put seven signs on the bridge for about a month, said city spokeswoman Kathleen Strand.

Strand promised the city’s new campaign will have “policies to protect the integrity of Chicago’s facade” and likened the initiative to the Chicago Transit Authority bringing in about $20 million annually from abundant ads on buses and elevated trains that don’t seem to anger anybody.

“The municipal marketing strategy is really about pursuing innovative opportunities to avoid having to cut city services or increase the tax burden on Chicagoans,” Strand said.

Still, some ask where the line will be drawn. Could the city’s historic Water Tower be next? Or Grant Park’s famed Buckingham Fountain?

The city’s two major daily newspapers have faced off with opposing views. Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin called the bridge ads “a visual crime” and “a grotesque cheapening of the public realm.” A Chicago Sun-Times editorial said the ads, while unappealing, “beat going bust.”

Bank of America spokeswoman Diane Wagner said the company said yes when Chicago officials asked if the bank wanted to advertise on the bridge because it’s a major employer and philanthropic supporter in the city.

“We agreed to be the first company to display on the bridge because we want to help the city explore new revenue sources and we think this is an innovative way to generate new revenue,” Wagner said.

Chicago advertising professionals doubt it was a smart move for either side.

“I have made my living in advertising, but there has to be better ways to raise money,” said Tim Terchek, executive creative director of the Drucker Group ad firm. What’s more, the bridge ads could backfire if public disgust sticks to the bank, he said.

Leo Burnett Company’s chief strategy officer Stephen Hahn-Griffiths, whose office overlooks the bridge ads, said they are a blight.

“It’s like commercial graffiti,” Hahn-Griffiths said. “It makes no sense from a marketing perspective and I question the intent of doing this because it does not seem like a smart decision.”

Former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, president and CEO of the Chicago-based Congress for the New Urbanism, suggested the city could instead rent out spaces like the City Hall lobby or library and cultural center theaters for weddings and other events.

“Placing advertising on a city’s architectural assets takes away from the public realm,” Norquist said.

Some officials across the country, and the world, are turning to private money for public projects.

In Rome, an Italian shoe company founder has pledged to foot $34 million to restore the Colosseum – the ancient arena blackened by pollution – and its founder has said the gesture could launch more private sponsorship for public benefit in Italy. In Venice, Mayor Giorgio Orsoni defended the use of publicity on restoration of such projects as the famed Doges Palace, saying sponsors’ contribution allowed the work to be accelerated.

But Venice also has strict rules on the use of advertisements. Only 10 percent of an exposed facade can be covered, and ads for cigarettes, alcohol and those featuring nudity are banned.

Back in the U.S., a suburban Salt Lake City school district plans to be Utah’s first to plaster its buses with advertisements in an effort to generate additional revenue without raising taxes. While the ad revenue is expected to supplement the Jordan School District’s budget, officials said it won’t be enough to make up for the recent budget cuts.

It’s a similar story in Golden, Colo., where Jefferson County Public Schools’ report cards now feature ads for the CollegeInvest college savings program. The ads raise $30,000 a year.

“Parents understand where we are at with the funding issues and most of the reaction has been positive,” said school district spokeswoman Lorie Gillis.

Retiree Jim Phillips, who leads free tours of Chicago’s bridges, challenged the city to channel public curiosity about the structures into money-making ventures, such as charging tourists to see the bridge houses’ inner workings.

“If it gets to the point advertisements go on more of these historic structures, I don’t think there’s any way to stop them on others,” Phillips said. “What if you put a NASCAR suit on the Picasso? What if you slapped a Google sign on one of the lions at the Art Institute?”

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Raymond Harris, 36, was charged Thursday with first-degree murder and robbery in the death of Virginia Perillo, 73.

In court, prosecutors said Harris, who was paroled earlier this year after he served 13 years of a 30-year prison sentence on attempted murder and aggravated arson convictions, attended a party after attacking Perillo and was seen wearing “brand new clothes” and showing off new rings which he used later that night to propose to his girlfriend, according to the Chicago Tribune. Perillo’s family reportedly confirmed that rings being worn by Harris’ fiance belonged to the victim.

Read more at HuffingtonPost.com

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The video, which appears to have been shot in April, was posted on the website World Star Hip Hop last weekend and immediately went viral.

It shows a teen walking up to a man who appears to be homeless and punching him, as his friends laughed.

VIDEO:
http://blip.tv/play/AYLdhXgC.html

BlackLikeMoi reports:

A Facebook page identified a man they say is the attacker in the video and urged that he be brought to justice.

Fox Chicago spoke to a woman the TV station reported was the attacker’s mother. She reportedly admitted her son was the attacker, and said he had been “going through some things.”

The Chicago Transit Authority told Fox Chicago they were looking into the matter. They did not immediately respond to a request from the News for comment.

Read more at BlackLikeMoi.com

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The ninth-grader, Keshawn Perkins, 15, pummeled his grandmother with a lamp and stabbed her in the neck, head, and body with a kitchen knife. He then wrapped her body in a blanket and dumped it in a sewer trap behind her house, before taking off with her purse.

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A neighbor spotted the gore-spattered teen dragging something through his backyard and then fleeing, the Tribune said. Perkins was arrested a short time later.

Prosecutors said that Perkins admitted to the savage attack, saying his grandmother had yelled at him for skipping school and he beat her with the lamp “until she shut up,” the Tribune reported.

Read more at NYDailyNews

The men were convicted as teenagers in the rape and murder of Cateresa Matthews of Dixmoor, which is about 20 miles south of Chicago. She disappeared after leaving her grandmother’s house in November 1991 and her body was found weeks later near a highway with a gunshot wound to the mouth.

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The murder went unsolved for about a year. Then in 1992, five teens were arrested. Two signed confessions and agreed to testify against the others for shorter prison sentences, even though attorneys said there were inconsistencies in their testimony and DNA evidence taken from the girl did not match any of the five teens.

Prosecutors reopened the case this year after new DNA testing uploaded to a state database linked a convicted rapist to the crime. He has not been charged in Matthew’s killing, but remains under investigation and is serving prison time in Cook County for a drug offense, authorities said.

The mood in the courtroom Thursday was described with word: Stunned.

“It’s truly unexplainable,” said attorney Josh Tepfer who represented one of the men and works for Northwestern University School of Law’s Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth. “It’s one of the most tragic injustices in this state’s history. It’s five kids who were wrongfully convicted … while a true perpetrator went on and lived a criminal lifestyle.”

The prosecutors’ move came after years of legal battles for the three men — Robert Taylor, 34, Jonathan Barr, 34, and James Harden, 36, — who have been in prison for nearly two decades. The three were to be released from Illinois prisons as early as Thursday once paperwork was completed. Prosecutors said they would vacate the convictions of the two others who had already served prison sentences.

“He’s lost his childhood. You can’t put a price on that,” said Craig Cooley, a staff attorney with the New York-based Innocence Project, who represented Barr. “He’s angry at what happened, but he’s forgiven and is moving on.”

Barr and Harden, who are brothers, were both in custody at Menard Correctional Center.

“Their mother and father passed away while they were in prison,” said Tara Thompson, a staff attorney with the University of Chicago Law School Exoneration Project, who represented Harden. “He missed the opportunity to go to college. Everything you’ve done in your life since high school, he’s missed out on that.”

Taylor was in custody at Stateville Correctional Center.

“They were all in tears and very, very happy that this ordeal was over and grateful they’re going to be home for the holidays,” said Tepfer, Taylor’s attorney.

Thursday’s case, once dubbed “The Dixmoor Five,” is among the dozens of wrongful conviction cases in Illinois made public in recent years. Allegations of torture and coerced confessions by Chicago police eventually helped lead then-Republican Gov. George Ryan in 2000 to impose a moratorium on Illinois’ death penalty. Earlier this year, Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation abolishing the death penalty in Illinois.

Defense attorneys in the Dixmoor case blame a series of missteps on prosecutors and local police at the time, including allegedly coerced confessions.

“The fact that they accepted these false confessions is tunnel vision,” Cooley said. “The fact that they couldn’t look outside these confessions, and say, `Wait a minute.’”

The teens, including the victim, all knew each other from school. Defense attorneys claim the teens who confessed were questioned relentlessly and at least in one case were told that they could see their parents if they signed confessions.

Robert Lee Veal, 34, and Shainne Sharp signed written confessions and agreed to testify against the others in exchange for reduced 20-year prison sentences. Records show each served about 10 years.

Veal, who has “severe learning disabilities,” could not read when he was arrested and signed a confession not knowing what it was.

Taylor also had confessed to the crime, but later recanted saying it was coerced. He and Harden were sentenced to 80 years in prison. Barr received 85 years.

Defense attorneys had asked for new DNA testing in 2009. New tests this year isolated a genetic profile from swabs taken from the victim. Illinois State Police uploaded it to a database which matched the profile of a man who was 33 at the time of the 1991 murder and had been convicted of a separate sexual assault.

Dixmoor police declined to comment Thursday.

“We conducted a very detailed and extensive investigation into the details of this case,” said Cook County state’s attorney’s office spokeswoman Sally Daly.

Sharp, 36, is serving time at Westville Correctional Facility in Indiana on a drug offense, according to online records with the Indiana Department of Corrections.

Veal, who lives in St. Paul, Minn., had not been told the news, his Chicago-based attorney Stuart Chanen said.

While Veal has been out of prison since 2002, his wrongful conviction has dramatically altered the course of his life, Chanen said. Unemployed, Veal spent a good chunk of his life behind bars at a time he might otherwise have been getting help for learning disabilities.

“It’s virtually impossible to get a job with a murder conviction, with being an ex-con … on your rap sheet,” said Chanen.

He said the decision to drop the charges, while not giving him back a decade of his life or make finding work a certainty, “At least he gets the stench of that off his record.”

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The vigil was the first of five scheduled for the week by Urban Dolorosa, a community organization that has memorialized Chicago’s young victims with poetry, music and performances.

The mayor is known for personally calling the family of each young victim of gun violence, most recently a 10-year-old boy shot in the leg on his way home from trick-or-treating on the city’s Northwest Side on Monday night.

Read more at the Huffington Post.

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The vigil was the first of five scheduled for the week by Urban Dolorosa, a community organization that has memorialized Chicago’s young victims with poetry, music and performances.

The mayor is known for personally calling the family of each young victim of gun violence, most recently a 10-year-old boy shot in the leg on his way home from trick-or-treating on the city’s Northwest Side on Monday night.

Read more at the Huffington Post.

He goes to the back room at the shop where he often works after school and scans the bikes and bike parts. Many are donated. Some are found, abandoned on bike racks. The key, Reggie says, is to find the right frame. It has to be solid. It has to fit the rider’s build.

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Always, there are diamonds in the rough that, with a little love and polish, can turn into something special.

Reggie was kind of like that, too – a diamond in the rough – when he first stepped into this warehouse on Chicago’s South Side that is home to the Blackstone Bicycle Works.

That was two years ago. He was 13, a good kid – capable, by all accounts, but a bit lost. Then he put on a bike mechanic’s apron for the first time, and something clicked.

Certainly, the fact that he could work 25 hours to earn a free bike was enticing.

That’s why most kids come to the after-school program at this shop in the city’s Woodlawn neighborhood. For these boys and girls, a bike represents freedom, a way to fly more quickly through the gang-ridden streets that surround the shop.

They feel the wind on their faces, and can be alone with their thoughts. Many ride to places they don’t often go — to the lakeshore or a museum or to the Lincoln Park Zoo, 10 miles to the north.

Grinning broadly, sixth-grader Kaniya Coleman says, “When I ride I feel like a super woman.” She recalls a trip to the beach this summer when she and others wore capes while they rode in a pack, whooping and hollering all the way. “It was awesome.”

For Reggie, there also is comfort, and freedom, in just being here in this place for a few hours – in working with his hands, in building something, in belonging.

“It feels like home. When you walk in, people greet you, say hello. People listen,” says the 15-year-old high school freshman.

He feels safe here.

___

Once he chooses a bike for its frame, the process begins.

He strips it down, takes off the wheels and all rusted parts that have to be replaced. Then the rebuilding begins.

Reggie, who has worked his way up to the position of bike apprentice, wears a black apron that represents that status. The fledgling mechanics around him start with green aprons and work up to red and purple as they master the basics.

Aaron Swanton, an adult mechanic and the youth program manager at Blackstone, remembers when Reggie was one of those beginners. He didn’t smile much, but had an intensity and steady work ethic.

“It’s different for every kid. But sometimes it just fits right away – and for Reggie, that’s how it’s been,” Swanton says.

He and the other adults at the shop learned, over time, about the “complications” of Reggie’s home life, including helping to care for his grandmother, who is chronically ill. With just his younger sister living there with them, he was the man of the house, but at 13 wasn’t prepared for that.

“I needed somebody to show me how to be a man,” Reggie says.

Turns out, Swanton, a former teacher who’s been at the shop for more than four years, was one of those people.

___

Blackstone is a working bike shop, probably best described as a youth-focused nonprofit organization that sustains itself with bike sales and repairs. There are at least 20 kids there on any given day, doing homework, playing games or putting time in at the shop. When they’ve worked on bikes for 20 hours, they get to choose one to rebuild that they can keep. When they get to 25 hours, they can take that bike home. They can repeat this process, and earn as many bikes as they like, Swanton says.

The bikes that don’t go to kids are sold each Saturday. Many of the customers are students and faculty from the University of Chicago, a few blocks to the north.

Tuning up customers’ bikes, fixing flats and sticky gears is fine – but Reggie finds building a bike particularly satisfying.

After he strips a frame, he often works first on the handlebars, rummaging through used bike parts to find them. For his own bikes, he tends to choose the kind that stick straight up on the ends, like the horns of a bull.

They look powerful and give him good control, which can be an elusive commodity in this neighborhood.

Most of the kids who come to the after-school program don’t have much to call their own. Many come from gang families.

But Tyjuan Edwards, a youth mentor there who is himself a product of the South Side, wanted kids from those families to have a respite, too. He approached gang members in the neighborhood.

“If you don’t want your little brother or sister out here with you, send them to the shop,” Edwards, who’s known as “T,” told them.

And they did.

Here, for a couple of hours, they can work on bikes, finish their schoolwork with volunteer tutors and snack on fresh fruit. If they earn a bike, Edwards says, all the better.

___

Reggie pulls old tires and tubes off the bike wheels and replaces them with new ones. This is the easy part, he says. This is the first thing new bike mechanics learn how to do.

Once he has those back on, he assembles the chain, screws on pedals and finds a seat.

He prefers a bike without multiple gears, likes to power the bike himself.

He is a big, strong kid, plays football now on his high school team. Edwards beams “like a proud dad” when he talks about the three times Reggie sacked the quarterback in a game this fall.

Indeed, these guys have become Reggie’s family. He likes to make them proud – and talks about going to college and becoming a mechanic, or a lawyer.

Other kids say the same. Fifth-grader Diamond Chester comes to the shop to build bikes sometimes – but for her, the help with homework is most important.

“I want to be accepted to a good high school,” she says, fully believing that coming here will help her do that, as it has Reggie and others.

___

Last, come the brakes.

Reggie runs the cable through the plastic housing and pulls it through. Once he’s got it set, he cranks the pedal to get the back wheel spinning, then squeezes the lever on the handle. The brake pads tighten and the wheel comes to a stop.

Outside the shop, a boy carelessly throws his books across a table where some of the kids are doing their homework. They jump at the loud noise, as the books scatter. Edwards turns around quickly. His tone is stern. “That’s 10 push-ups,” he tells the boy, who hesitates for a moment. “Come one. I’ll do them with you.”

At Blackstone, there are clear expectations. If you don’t go to school, for instance, you can’t come to the program. Respect is a must, as is cleaning up after yourself. You have to finish your homework before fixing or riding bikes or throwing a football.

“The importance of schoolwork is absolute.” Swanton says. “No exceptions.”

A mother who has brought her son to the shop to check out the after-school program hears that, and nods approvingly.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” she says.

____

Not long after Reggie started coming to the shop, his school called Swanton to let him know that Reggie was skipping school. That was the last time that happened.

Now he’s the one gently lecturing other kids about staying in line.

“It’s my turn to set the example,” he says.

Things truly came full circle last school year, when he won a brand new bike for having the best report card. He stood by the bike and smiled for photos. Then he turned around and gave it to another kid.

“I already had a bike,” he now says, shrugging. He figures he’s earned at least 10, though some of them have been stolen.

“This kid didn’t have one.”

And there will always be another bike to build.

He believes promoting his “Englewood Film Festival” is a step in the right direction, with two days of independent films starting Friday.

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He’s also the first to admit that the venue makes success a nearly impossible task in a neighborhood more accustomed to crime than cultural festivals. About half of the residents of Englewood live in poverty.

Harris is hoping his film festival prompts discourse and first-time neighborhood visitors.

The event that will feature five films and free acting workshops will end Saturday with a screening of “The Interrupters,” a documentary chronicling Chicago violence that debuted to at the Sundance Film Festival.

Laid off were the only two editors left among its staff of 18 — Executive Editor Lou Ransom and News Editor Rhonda Gillespie

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An accounts receivables staffer also was laid off, and the paper’s only photographer switched from full- to part-time, according to staffers at the 106-year-old, once daily paper founded by Robert Abbott in 1905. Amidst financial woes, it became a weekly publication in 2008.

The Defender is thousands of dollars behind in its lease with developer Elzie Higginbottom, owner of its 8,500-square-foot headquarters at 4445 S. King Dr., the landmark Metropolitan Funeral Home building in Bronzeville and the Defender’s third home since 2003.

Read more at Chicago Sun Times

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The arrests early Sunday came as about 500 members of Occupy Chicago refused to take down tents and leave a city park when it closed. Organizers did not seek a permit to be in the park after hours.

Twenty-two-year-old David Orlikoff of Chicago was among those arrested. He says the protesters don’t want to be confrontational, but will use civil disobedience when the group feels “it’s appropriate.”

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He says he’s disappointed Mayor Rahm Emanuel didn’t intervene to allow the protest to continue at an entrance to Grant Park.

Occupy Iowa members reached a deal with Des Moines’ mayor Friday to move from the state Capitol to a city park, avoiding arrests.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

Chicago police arrested 175 members of a group protesting corporate greed early Sunday after they refused to take down their tents and leave a city park when it closed.

About 500 members of Occupy Chicago set up camp at the entrance to Grant Park on Saturday evening after a protest earlier in the day involving about 2,000, the Chicago Tribune reported. Occupy Chicago is an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement that started last month in New York City and has inspired protests nationwide.

The Chicago demonstration entered its 24th day Sunday with protesters at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, organizer Rachael Perrotta said. She said organizers also were meeting protesters who had been arrested as they were released from jail.

Chicago police said they gave protesters repeated warnings after the park closed at 11 p.m. and began making arrests when they refused to leave. Officers also asked protesters to take down their tents before beginning to cut them down to clear the area, police said.

The arrests began about 1 a.m. Sunday and ended with the park cleared about 3:30 a.m., the newspaper reported. It said most arrests were peaceful, but at least two men refused to stand and had to be carried away. Video showed protesters sitting on the ground, chanting “This is what democracy looks like” and “Shame on you, CPD” as arrests were made.

Chicago police said protesters who were arrested would be released after background checks were done to make sure they didn’t have any outstanding arrest warrants. They could face fines for violating a municipal ordinance.

Organizers of similar demonstrations in other cities have applied for permits to remain overnight or have moved out of parks and public buildings when they closed. Perrotta, an office worker in her 30s, said organizers in Chicago did not seek a permit to be in the park after hours.

“We believe we have the right as an international movement to secure a space where we can interact with the public and grow our occupation,” she said.

Fenger High School coach Cassius Chambers, 28, turned himself into police yesterday for an incident on Oct. 1 when more than 20 of his football players jumped Darion Jones, 16, outside of his Chicago home.

One of the players had accused Jones of stealing his Nike flip-flops, Jones’ mother told Chicago’s NBC affiliate.

Chambers and one of his assistants, Roscoe Pitts, watched the mêlée, but did nothing to stop it, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Read more at the New York Daily News.

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Fenger High School gained notoriety in 2009 after student, Derrion Albert, was beaten to death in a streetfight in an incident that was caught on video.

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NBC Chicago reports:

Police said Tuesday morning the incident was a simple battery between two 16-year-olds near the teen’s home at 118th and Wentworth.

But Darion Jones’ family told reporters he was badly beaten Saturday afternoon by a group of teens driven to the home by two Fenger High School coaches.

He said the attack has left him afraid and not wanting to go to school

Read More At NBC Chicago

View more videos at: http://nbcchicago.com.

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With the national African-American unemployment rate at 16.7 percent, the highest since 1984, Chicago’s community of color is a dismal example.

“I know that our black men don’t have nowhere to fit,” says Chi-town native Orlando Chaff, who was out of work for 3 years before recently finding a job as a limo driver. “Too many of them standing around the house, standing on the block.”

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Start Gallery

CHICAGO — Police are searching for Soulchartirya Terry who was last seen in her military uniform leaving Phoenix Military Academy on Campbell Ave in Chicago.

Terry has been missing for a week now and police are actively looking for leads.

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The Huffington Post reports:

Terry is African-American, 5’10″ tall and 184 pounds. She has brown eyes, sandy-brown hair and a light complexion. Terry wears black rimmed glasses and was carrying a brown Coach messenger bag when she was last seen.

Anyone with information about Soulchartirya Terry’s whereabouts is asked to call Chicago police at 312-747-8385.

Read More At The Huffington Post

15 Chicago Inmates Say They Were Tortured Into Making Confessions

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Illinois Supreme Court justices challenged prosecutors Thursday about the strength of their evidence in the rape conviction of a man who says he was tortured into confessing by Chicago police officers.

In oral arguments in a case with potentially far-reaching impact on how Illinois deals with police torture cases – and one that could lay the groundwork for similar appeals by as many as 20 other inmates – prosecutors argued that the state had enough evidence to convict inmate Stanley Wrice without his confession. Wrice, now 57, claims he confessed only after being tortured by officers under the command of notorious Lt. Jon Burge 30 years ago.

The justices asked whether proper appeals procedure was followed and pressed Special Prosecutor Myles O’Rourke about the state’s other evidence, noting that there was no DNA or fingerprints introduced at trial when Wrice was convicted in 1983.

The case was brought to the high court by prosecutors, who are asking the justices to overturn an appellate court decision granting Wrice a new hearing on his torture claims. In response, his attorney made an impassioned plea to the justices to uphold the appellate ruling and take a stand against “the very bad blight from Jon Burge and these torture cases.”

“This court should not tolerate the torture of its citizens within its walls,” said defense attorney Heidi Lambros.

The outcome of the case is being closely monitored by the other inmates who say Burge’s officers forced them to confess to crimes they didn’t commit, and lawyers and experts say the case could open the door to new hearings for those men. The mother of one of those inmates attended the high court proceedings along with about 10 other Chicago-area activists.

Burge is serving a 4 1/2-year sentence in federal prison following his conviction last year of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying in a civil suit when he said he’d never witnessed or participated in the torture of suspects.

Wrice is serving a 100-year-sentence. He is one of dozens of men, almost all of them young and black, who have claimed since the 1970s that Burge and his officers tortured them into confessing to crimes ranging from armed robbery to murder. Allegations persisted until the 1990s at police stations on the city’s South and West sides.

Wrice says officers working for Burge used a flashlight and rubber hose to beat him in the face and groin until he confessed to the 1982 assault at his home.

Prosecutors have not disputed that Wrice was tortured, and O’Rourke called police torture “abhorrent” and said the state doesn’t condone it. But, he said there was “overwhelming evidence” of Wrice’s guilt, including testimony from two eyewitnesses and the fact that an iron used in the attack was found in Wrice’s bedroom, as were the victim’s clothes.

O’Rourke insisted the state had enough evidence to convict Wrice without the allegedly coerced confession. Prosecutors want justices to rule that the confession was the legal equivalent of “harmless error.”

“The idea that the other evidence was somehow inconsequential was not the case,” O’Rourke said.

But the justices pressed O’Rourke on the point. In a series of questions, Justice Charles Freeman asked whether there is any physical evidence linking Wrice to the crime.

“But again, no DNA?” Freeman asked at one point, to which O’Rourke answered: “No DNA back in 1982.”

Justice Thomas Kilbride asked about a recent affidavit in which one of the two witnesses recanted, claiming Chicago police beat him into implicating Wrice.

Justice Anne Burke challenged the notion that the jury didn’t rely heavily on the confession, asking whether it was the “most probative and damaging evidence” prosecutors can present.

At Wrice’s original trial, the judge rejected his attempt to have his confession suppressed because of the torture, and a jury convicted him.

Each of his attempts for a new hearing on his torture claims was turned down until December, when the Illinois appellate court ordered a new evidentiary hearing, citing a state Supreme Court ruling that “the use of a defendant’s coerced confession as substantive evidence of his guilt is never harmless error.” The court ruled Wrice had presented enough consistent evidence of his torture over the years that his claim should be reconsidered.

In granting Wrice a new hearing, the appeals court skipped a step in the post-conviction process, and justices repeatedly asked about the procedural hiccup Thursday, specifically about whether sending the case back for that step would be a viable option.

The attorneys agreed it was a possibility, but Lambros noted it would force Wrice to wait even longer for a disposition as the case works its way back through the courts.

The justices pursued an extended line of questioning about the skipped step, likely looking first for the narrowest issue in the case, said Doug Godfrey, professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and a former prosecutor not involved with the torture cases.

Godfrey said finding another issue would mean justices won’t “have to take on the huge issue of torture. You can, in essence, say, `Look, all the rules weren’t followed below.’”

Attorneys and legal experts say while it’s difficult to predict what the high court will do, the court could order that all inmates with credible torture claims get new hearings, as defense attorneys have asked in an amicus brief. Or justices could allow the cases to work their way through the courts one-by-one on their merits, as prosecutors want.

Just six of the seven justices will consider the Wrice case after Justice Robert Thomas recused himself and did not hear oral arguments. No reason was given in court for the recusal. In the case of a 3-3 split, the appeals court ruling that gave Wrice a new hearing would stand, attorneys said.

Lambros said outside of court that she was encouraged by the proceedings.

“My sense is that Mr. Wrice is getting relief of some kind,” whether it’s a new hearing or the chance to refile his post-conviction petition. O’Rourke declined to speak after the hearing but said beforehand that he’s pleased the justices agreed to hear the case.

It isn’t clear when the court will rule. The court’s press office a ruling will come “in due course.”

Start Gallery

Stanley Wrice, who has been imprisoned for more than 30 years, says officers working for notorious Chicago police Lt. Jon Burge used a flashlight and rubber hose to beat him in the face and groin until he confessed to the 1982 assault at his home.

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Burge is serving a 4 1/2-year sentence in federal prison following his conviction last year of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying in a civil suit when he said he’d never witnessed or participated in the torture of suspects.

While the outcome of Wrice’s case is being closely monitored by several other inmates who say Burge’s officers forced them to confess to crimes they didn’t commit, prosecutors insist Wrice had his day in court and would have been convicted even without the confession. They’ve argued the court should consider the alleged torture as the legal equivalent of a “harmless error” that didn’t affect the outcome of the case.

Attorneys and legal experts say while it’s difficult to predict what the high court will do, Wrice’s case could influence how Illinois courts handle decades-old allegations of police torture going forward. The court could order that all inmates with credible torture claims get new hearings, as defense attorneys have asked in an amicus brief. Or justices could allow the cases to work their way through the courts one-by-one on their merits, as prosecutors want.

The Wrice case is an opportunity for the court “to clarify the situation and create a road map for these victims to have their cases heard in a meaningful way, up or down, and move toward putting this all behind us,” said Locke Bowman, legal director of the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University, who represents several alleged torture victims.

It’s not clear whether the court will address the wider issue. Ultimately, the ruling could be focused just on whether Wrice has met the legal requirements to get a new hearing, or it could be more sweeping, said Doug Godfrey, professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and a former prosecutor not involved with the torture cases.

“This can let the Illinois Supreme Court go all over the place if it wants to, or it can be really narrow,” Godfrey said. “They can use this as a vehicle to talk about the (police) torture cases” in general.

Justices have received briefs from both sides on the harmless error question, but they’ll have wide discretion on what they ask attorneys about, he said.

In a friend-of-the-court brief, ex-Gov. Jim Thompson, former U.S. Sen. Adlai Stevenson III and more than 60 current and former prosecutors, judges and lawmakers asked for new evidentiary hearings for inmates who say their convictions were based on coerced confessions. The brief marked the first effort on behalf of alleged Burge victims as a group and not separate individual cases, attorneys said.

Wrice is one of dozens of men, almost all of them young and black, who have claimed since the 1970s that Burge and his officers tortured them into confessing to crimes ranging from armed robbery to murder. Allegations persisted until the 1990s at police stations on the city’s South and West sides.

A Cook County paramedic and a doctor at the jail testified that Wrice told them about the alleged beating and that he had injuries consistent with his claims at the time of his arrest, including blood in his urine and bruises.

The trial judge rejected Wrice’s attempt to have his confession suppressed because of the torture, and a jury convicted him. Each of his attempts for a new hearing on his torture claims was turned down until December, when the Illinois appellate court ordered a new evidentiary hearing, citing a state Supreme Court ruling that “the use of a defendant’s coerced confession as substantive evidence of his guilt is never harmless error.”

The court ruled Wrice had presented enough consistent evidence of his torture over the years that his claim should be reconsidered.

The state’s position is that the harmless error reading by the appellate court “is not the law,” said special prosecutor Myles O’Rourke. Aside from the confession, the evidence against Wrice at trial included testimony from two eyewitnesses and the fact that the attack happened in his bedroom, prosecutors say.

The then-assistant Cook County state’s attorney who prosecuted the case, Terry Gillespie, said he’s still sure of Wrice’s guilt and that he doesn’t believe the jury convicted him on just the confession.

Defense attorneys insist that upon closer inspection, the case against Wrice falls apart. The victim didn’t identify him as one of her attackers, and no physical evidence such as fingerprints or DNA linked him to the crime. One of two eyewitnesses has since recanted, alleging that he, too, was beaten by police to implicate Wrice.

Wrice has maintained that he was home at the time of the attack but that he didn’t participate or know it was happening. He’s serving a 100-year sentence.

If the appeals court ruling in Wrice is allowed to stand, prosecutors argue that all inmates will be encouraged to claim their confessions were tortured in order to automatically get new hearings, removing the court’s discretion to review the merits of each case.

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