Illinois court orders retrial for convicted child murderer tortured into confession

An Illinois appeals court ordered new trials for a man convicted of killing two children in Chicago three decades ago because his claims of being tortured into confessing were credible.

The court on Monday also ordered that George Anderson’s statements to police admitting killing an 11-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl in 1991 cannot be used during the new trials, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Anderson said he was kicked, punched and hit with a baton during 36 hours of questioning by detectives working under disgraced former Cmdr. Jon Burge, who died in 2018.

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“Anderson, now 60 years old, has waited over three decades for this day,” the court said in a 64-page ruling.

Between 1972 and 1991, Burge led a “midnight crew” of rogue detectives accused of torturing more than 100 suspects, mostly Black men, to secure confessions.

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Anderson was arrested days after a boy was killed by a stray bullet during a shootout between rival gang members and signed confessions to the murders of both children.

Anderson later sought to suppress his statements, but the confessions were allowed into his trials. He was convicted in 1994 of the boy’s murder and pleaded guilty to killing the girl.

Burge was fired from the Chicago Police Department in 1993. He was sentenced to four years in federal prison in 2011 for lying about the abuse of criminal suspects.