For decades, people convicted of criminal charges such as murder and rape in the Chicago area have attempted to get their confessions overturned. Dozens of people in jail or who have already served time in jail for criminal charges only confessed because Chicago police supposedly tortured them into making the confessions.

The requests of these inmates have been ignored and denied for quite some time until a former Chicago police lieutenant was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice relating to witnessing and participating in torturing confessions out of criminal suspects. The Illinois Supreme Court ruling gives hope to dozens of inmates who state that they too confessed to a crime they did not commit because of police torture. In the instant case, the justices ruled that the alleged perpetrator could obtain a new hearing regarding evidence that he was beat into a confession with a rubber hose and flashlight.

The crime the man was convicted of was rape, which he has been sentenced to serve 100 years in prison. Prosecutors are adamant that they had enough proof to convict him of the crime, which happened in 1982, even without his confession.

The man is now 57 years old and insists he did not commit the crime. The alleged criminals who may be affected by this ruling have been claiming that police tortured confessions out of them since the 1970s. Many men who were incarcerated because of forced confessions have already been released, but the instant case adds forward progress to defense attorneys' efforts to have certain convictions thrown out. The court ruled in the instant case that the trial court was wrong to not allow post-conviction cases to move forward.

While the high court did not order new evidentiary hearings that attorneys requested, the attorneys said that the ruling opens doors for other victims of the police lieutenant's torturing practices. The many allegations of police torture to obtain confessions caused the state of Illinois to put a moratorium on the death penalty in 2000 and to finally abolish the death penalty in 2011.

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Ill. high court ruling offers new hope to inmates," Karen Hawkins, Feb. 2, 2012