Authors: Steve Bogira
4
Series of arson fires; “sometimes paternal”; “give the go”:
“Uncover plot to oust Negroes from 1st Ward,”
Chicago Defender
, Sept. 7, 1946.
5
When Bruno Roti died:
“Bruno Roti: Mystery mob boss,”
Chicago Daily News
, July 10, 1958.
6
Several of his six sons:
CCC memo.
7
His son Fred: U.S. v. Marcy and Roti
, 90 CR 1045; “Roti found guilty on racketeering, bribery charges,”
Chicago Tribune
, Jan. 15, 1993.
8
Control of gambling:
Office of the Independent Hearing Officer, Laborers’ International Union of North America, “In Re: Trusteeship Proceedings, Chicago District Council, Order and Memorandum” (Finding of Fact No. 26), Feb. 7, 1998; “List hoodlums ruling flow of graft,”
Chicago Sun-Times
, Feb. 3, 1960.
9
Arrested repeatedly:
Skid Caruso was one of the “1st ward hoodlums” who helped bring a $100,000–a-night crap game to Chicago from the suburbs in 1962, Chicago police said that year. The game operated in the 200 block of West Cermak Road. “Probe how dice game ran wide open,”
Chicago Tribune
, Nov. 4, 1962. Earlier that same year, state’s attorney’s police had raided another large dice game across the street. When the police broke into the secret gambling room, the occupants attempted to flee through a freshly dug underground tunnel, but their escape was foiled when a fat gambler got wedged in the tunnel. Skid Caruso was among the eighteen arrested, and was one of the six charged with operating the game. A newspaper story about the raid made note of a “gallery of ancestral pictures flanking a family coat of arms” on a wall of the gambling room. “The coat of arms is of the Caruso family and an accompanying legend says the line was founded in 1026 by an Italian ‘Cavalier of Fortune’ in the service of Emperor Frederick II.” In another corner of the gambling room was a glassed-in shrine with religious statues and holy pictures.
Chicago Sun-Times
, May 7, 1962.
10
“Upper stratum”: Juice Racketeers: Report on Criminal Usury in the Chicago Area
, Illinois Crime Investigating Commission, 1970, p. 128.
11
Skid’s son Frank:
“Frank [Toots] Caruso grew up within the organization with membership being passed from father to son like a family business,” federal prosecutors maintained in 1996, in a filing in
U.S. v. LaMantia et. al.
, 93 CR 523. Caruso was not among the defendants in that case, but federal authorities had submitted FBI information about Caruso in support of a request to tap Caruso’s phone during a gambling investigation.
12
Several Chicago unions:
“In Re: Trusteeship Proceedings, Chicago District Council” (Findings of Fact Nos. 39 and 51), Feb. 7, 1998.
13
Charles Bills:
“Union lifts curtain on mob in push to purge ranks,”
Chicago Tribune
, Aug. 8, 1997.
14
He and three Bridgeport friends: U.S. v. LaMantia et. al.
, 82 CR 871.
15
Ice pick:
“Tapes show mob threat to ‘cut heart’ of ‘gambler,’ ”
Chicago Sun-Times
, Sept. 7, 1983.
16
“A lot of nonsense”:
Transcript in
U.S. v. LaMantia et. al.
, Sept. 30, 1983.
TWELVE · DEFECTIVE PRODUCTS
1
Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities:
TASC stood for Treatment Alternatives to Street Crime when it was created in 1972. It later became Treatment Alternatives for Special Clients before it was renamed again in 1996. Interview with Melody Heaps, TASC founder and president.
2
Coroner’s jury ruled:
Coroner’s Verdict, Inquest No. 290305, March 11, 1975.
3
An hour and fifty-four minutes:
“Youth gets life term despite plea,”
Chicago Sun-Times
, Sept. 22, 1982.
4
“By about”:
Cooney interview.
5
“The retarded”:
“Report of the Task Force on Law,”
President’s Panel on Mental Retardation, Task Force on Law
, 1963, p. 33.
6
“Anecdotal accounts”; “more susceptible”; “great care”:
Fred Inbau, John E. Reid, Joseph P. Buckley, and Brian C. Jayne,
Criminal Interrogation and Confessions
(Aspen Publishers, 2001), pp. 431–32.
7
“Dramatic tones”; “a positive attitude”:
Ibid., p. 404.
8
“Heavy burden”: Miranda v. Arizona
, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), at 475.
9
A study:
Morgan Cloud, George B. Shepherd, Alison Nodvin Barkoff, and Justin V. Shur, “Words Without Meaning: The Constitution, Confessions, and Mentally Retarded Suspects,”
University of Chicago Law Review
(spring 2002), p. 495.
10
A checkered career:
Maurice Possley, Steve Mills, and Ken Armstrong, “Veteran detective’s murder cases unravel,”
Chicago Tribune
, Dec. 17, 2001.
11
Boudreau helped pay:
Deposition of Kenneth Boudreau, June 20, 1996, in
Wiggins v. Burge, et al.
, 93 C 199.
12
The rate of hospitalization:
David Mechanic and David A. Rochefort, “Deinstitutionalization: An Appraisal of Reform,”
Annual Review of Sociology
(Annual Reviews, Inc., 1990), vol. 16, issue 1, p. 301.
13
The money promised:
Ralph Slovenko, “The Transinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill,”
Ohio Northern Law Review
(2003), p. 641.
14
Sixteen percent:
“Mental Health and Treatment of Inmates and Probationers,” Special Report, Bureau of Justice Statistics, July 1999.
15
That would equal 333,000:
Sixteen percent times the inmate population at midyear 2003, which was 2,079,000, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
16
The number of patients:
“Highlights of Organized Mental Health Services in 2000 and Major National and State Trends,” Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
17
A widespread public belief:
In one telephone survey, 89 percent of the respondents agreed that “the insanity plea is a loophole that allows too many guilty people to go free.” V. P. Hans, “An Analysis of Public Attitudes Toward the Insanity Defense,”
Criminology
, 4(2) (1986), pp. 393–415. In another study, 209 University of Wyoming students were asked to guess how many felony defendants invoked an insanity plea in a given two-year period in Wyoming. As a group, the students guessed 37 percent. In fact, less that one-half of one percent of the defendants had entered the plea. Richard A. Pasewark and Deborah Seidenzahl, “Opinions Concerning the Insanity Plea and Criminality Among Mental Patients,”
Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law
, 7(2) (1979), pp. 199–202.
18
Eight-state study:
L. A. Callahan, H. J. Steadman, M. A. McGreevy, and P. C. Robbins, “The Volume and Characteristics of Insanity Defense Pleas,”
Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law
(1991), pp. 331–38.
19
In Cook County:
According to Paul Biebel, criminal court presiding judge.
20
More time in custody:
Grant H. Morris, “Placed in Purgatory: Conditional Release of Insanity Acquittees,”
Arizona Law Review
(fall 1997), p. 1061.
21
Guilty but mentally ill:
Mark A. Woodmansee, “The Guilty but Mentally Ill Verdict: Political Expediency at the Expense of Moral Principle,”
Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy
(1996), p. 341.
22
They kill themselves:
Charles Lloyd,
Suicide and Self-Injury in Prison
(Home Office Research Study, London, 1990).
23
Mentally retarded prisoners: Ruiz v. Estelle, 503 F. Supp. 1265
(1980).
THIRTEEN · FIXES
1
He once scolded a jury:
“He just sat on the bench up there and shouted at the top of his voice,” one juror told a
Tribune
reporter. Maloney said he was only shouting at the public defender for interrupting him. The transcript showed that Maloney had told the jurors, “How you arrived at this verdict is beyond me.” The juror said that because of the way the judge had treated the jury, she’d lie if necessary to avoid future jury service. “A shocking verdict and jolting response,”
Chicago Tribune
, May 13, 1986.
2
Operation Greylord: Chicago Sun-Times
reporter Art Petacque disclosed in August 1983 that an ongoing investigation of the Cook County courts would soon result in indictments. The first indictments were announced that December. Tuohy and Warden,
Greylord
, pp. 139–40. “Greylord” was a “sarcastic reference to the dignity of the English lord chancellors, who wear wigs, and the lack of dignity in the Chicago courts.” Ibid., p. 45.
3
“Not germane”: People v. Titone
, 151 Ill. 2d 19 (1992).
4
Maloney, by then retired: U.S. v. Maloney
, 91 CR 477; “Ex-judge Maloney guilty of fixing murder cases,”
Chicago Sun-Times
, April 17, 1993.
5
Another 26th Street judge:
“Rukn convictions set aside; corruption of judge is cited,”
Chicago Tribune
, Sept. 19, 1996.
6
Roth not only fixed cases: U.S. v. Roth
, 85 CR 763; 860 F. 2d 1382 (1988).
7
Stopped investigating Lane:
Tuohy and Warden,
Greylord, p
. 132.
8
Convictions in the 1980s and 1990s:
Most of the convictions were a result of Greylord, but Maloney and two other judges were convicted after a second federal probe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Operation Gambat. “Gambat” was derived from “gambling attorney;” federal prosecutors’ chief witness, Robert Cooley, was an outfit attorney with gambling debts.
9
In a 1990 survey:
“Report on the Operations of the Criminal Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County,” Chicago Crime Commission, October 1990. Maloney also got poor marks in knowledge of the law and impartiality, and in his willingness to avoid personal or political favors.
10
“Distinct possibility”:
Seventh Circuit appellate judge Ilana Rovner, concurring in part and dissenting in part in
Bracy v. Schomig
, 286 F.3d 406, at 426 (2002).
11
Local prosecutors weren’t about to expose:
“Not only outright corruption and not only the dictates of a political machine but also restraints imposed by friendship, political indebtedness, and political fear worked to discourage local prosecutors from pursuing local grafters.” Noonan,
Bribes
, pp. 600–1.
12
Federal laws passed in the 1970s:
Especially the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO), enacted in 1970 to help federal prosecutors fight organized crime. The use of RICO against local corruption was a “facet of the larger tendency to federalize provincial preserves,” Noonan argues. It can’t be known if corruption increased in the 1970s and 1980s, but Noonan doubts it did. “What was clear was that corruption was being investigated and punished on a scale unknown before”—because the feds had gotten involved.
Bribes
, pp. 584–601.
13
The first judge in the nation:
Tuohy and Warden,
Greylord
, p. 36.
14
On the first day; “I love”: U.S. v. Roth
, 860 F. 2d 1382, 1383.
15
Olson pled guilty:
“Judge Olson gets 12-year sentence,”
Chicago Tribune
, March 22, 1986.
16
“Never fixed a murder”:
Maloney wasn’t the only judge at 26th Street who did that. In 1977, Judge Frank Wilson acquitted reputed mob hitman Harry Aleman of the 1972 shotgun murder of a Teamster’s steward, despite the testimony of two eyewitnesses. An informant later told authorities he’d bought the verdict from Judge Wilson with $10,000 of mob money. In 1990, shortly after Wilson learned that the acquittal was being investigated, he shot himself to death. Prosecutors later sought to retry Aleman, and his lawyers cited the Fifth Amendment protection against double-jeopardy in their attempt to block that effort. But the Illinois Appellate Court held that because of the fix, Aleman hadn’t been in “jeopardy” the first time he was tried. He was convicted in 1997 and sentenced to one hundred to three hundred years. The lawyer who first represented Aleman in the case was Maloney, although by the time of his first trial Aleman had a different lawyer. Maurice Possley and Rick Kogan,
Everybody Pays: Two Men, One Murder, and the Price of Truth
(Putnam, 2001).