Jon Burge 2.0 Victim Sues City for 20 Year Wrongful Imprisonment from Age 15

Close Colleagues of Notorious Police Torturer Jon Burge Sued for Frame-Up of Youth Anthony Jakes press

CHICAGO – A man framed for murder at age 15 by close colleagues of notorious torturer Cmdr. Jon Burge today sued the City of Chicago for a beating and false confession to murder forced out of him by the Chicago Police detectives. 

Anthony Jakes, 42, who served 20 years of a 40-year sentence, will be joined by friends, family and his attorneys at a 12 noon press conference today at the offices of Loevy & Loevy Attorneys at Law, 311 N. Aberdeen Street, 3rd floor, Chicago.

Notorious Jon Burge colleagues Detective Kenneth Boudreau and the late Detective Michael Kill stand accused of holding the then-teenager “more than sixteen hours without food, water, or access to his guardian, and eventually beat him into falsely claiming he was a lookout while another man committed murder.” If he didn’t confess, Boudreau and Kill allegedly threatened to have a local gang kill Jakes’s family.

Boudreau and Kill had Jakes’s guardian’s telephone number, but never called her during the 16 hours they held Jakes incommunicado, who had turned 15-years-old just a few weeks earlier, and contrary to police orders, did not have a youth officer present during Jakes’s interrogation.

Incredibly, Kill has testified that in the approximately 1500 murder cases that he worked on, 90% of the defendants confessed to him. He also testified that those 90% then filed motions to suppress the confessions, alleging that they were coerced using physical force. More recently, Kill and Boudreau have invoked their Fifth Amendment privilege against not testifying when asked about their interrogations of suspects.

In the notorious “Englewood Four” case, Boudreau and a colleague were the main individual defendants in a case that the City of Chicago settled for over $31 million for the false confessions of four young Black men, all of whom were exonerated when DNA discovered at the crime scene excluded them and instead implicated a serial rapist and murderer.

In an examination of thousands of murder cases in Cook County from 1991 through 2000, the Chicago Tribune observed, “Boudreau stands out not only for the number of his cases that have fallen apart, but for the reasons. In those cases, Boudreau has been accused by defendants of punching, slapping or kicking them; interrogating a juvenile without a youth officer present; and of taking advantage of mentally retarded suspects and others with low IQs.”

In addition to Jakes, so far 16 men accused of serious felonies have already been exonerated in false confession cases that Boudreau worked on. Beyond the 16, the suit lists 32 more young men of color (pp. 18-24) who have credibly accused Boudreau and Kill of physical attacks. Well before there was widespread publicity about the physical abuse that Boudreau and Kill are now notorious for, Jakes reported the physical attack on him by them and the court ordered that the Public Defenders’ Office photograph his injuries. The photos depicted bruising on Mr. Jakes’s navel, the left side of his stomach, the top of his back, and his left ribs, as well as injuries to his right elbow and knee.

After spending nearly half of his life behind bars, serving his entire sentence and being released from prison on parole, Jakes was finally able to prove his coerced confession was demonstrably false: the confession that Boudreau and Kill fabricated stated that Jakes ran home and saw the murder victim lying in the street through his bedroom window. Unbeknownst to Boudreau and Kill, however, Mr. Jakes lived in a rear lot and an apartment building blocked his view of the street; he could not possibly have seen the victim from the windows of his home.

On July 25, 2013, the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission issued a decision concluding Mr. Jakes’s claim of abuse was credible. On April 30, 2018, more than 25 years after Boudreau and Kill fabricated evidence against Mr. Jakes and coerced him into signing a false confession, the Cook County circuit court vacated Jakes’ conviction at the request of the Special Prosecutor assigned to prosecute his case.

Mr. Jakes is represented by Arthur Loevy, Jon Loevy, Russell Ainsworth and Alison Leff of the civil rights firm Loevy & Loevy Attorneys at Law. Loevy & Loevy is one of the nation’s largest civil rights law firms and has won more multi-million-dollar jury verdicts than any other civil rights law firm in the country.

A copy of the suit, Anthony Jakes v. Kenneth Boudreau, Estate of Michael Kill, Louis Caesar, Thomas Pack, Michael Delacy, Ken Burke, Fred Bonke, City of Chicago and Unknown Employees of the City of Chicago, No.1:19-cv-02204, can be found here.

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