Dupage Policy Journal

The jurisdiction of a controversial state-level commission charged with investigating claims of police torture would be expanded statewide under legislation almost certain to be introduced early in the new legislative year.

The office of state Senator Robert Peters (D-Chicago), who in 2021 introduced legislation to expand the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission’s (TIRC) jurisdiction beyond Cook County, confirmed to the DuPage Policy Journal that the bill will be back. Peters’ TIRC legislation, SB 2119, from the 2021-22 session, died earlier this month with the end of the lame duck session.

Created by the General Assembly in 2009, TIRC was charged with investigating claims of police brutality in the convictions of violent criminals. But the commission has been criticized by the families of victims, law enforcement, and some in the legal community for its lack of transparency and its aggressive, unconstitutional use of extraordinary judicial powers.

State Capitol

On TIRC’s recommendation, a spate of convicted murderers have been set free – cases where no new evidence was presented indicating the innocence of those convicted of the crimes. Some of the crimes go back decades, and witnesses, critics note, are deceased or no longer willing or able to give reliable testimony. Detectives are retired and reluctant to testify in cases in which TIRC commissioners have already determined police misconduct may have taken place.

TIRC, moreover, has a history of ignoring a requirement in the law that it notify that families of murder victims that the person convicted of the crime is before the commission for a vote recommending to a judge that the case be reopened.

In one notorious example, Joe Heinrich, brother of 1983 Rogers Park murder victim Jo Ellen Pueschel, discovered from a reporter in 2013 that the case of Jerry Mahaffey, one of two brothers convicted of raping and murdering Jo Ellen and murdering her husband Dean, and the attempted murder of their 11-year-old son Ricky, was before the commission. The family then discovered the commission had failed to notify other family members of victims in a host of other cases.

Henrich at a September 25, 2013 TIRC hearing: “This Commission has investigated and referred 17 cases to court. I have confirmed that nine of the 17 families of victims of those cases were never notified. By law, each case has three triggers that require victim notification. 27 calls or letters that should have been sent out by this commission did not happen. I spoke to those victims, and they were shocked. I have reviewed all of the posted minutes from your meetings and not one Commissioner ever asks about the victims, if they were notified or what they had to say. Either all of you believed that the victims did not want to be bothered with this, or all of you did not want to be bothered with the victims. Which is it?”

The evidence against Mahaffey and his brother, Reginald, was overwhelming: a third brother turned them in; they confessed to a state’s attorney; property taken from the Pueschels was found in both their apartments.

But some TIRC members concluded that credible evidence existed that the detectives had tortured Mahaffey even though former prosecutor Irv Miller  testified before the commission that Mahaffey never complained about a police beating, or showed any signs of a beating or discomfort when he was in a room at a police station with him and a court reporter.

TIRC voted 5-3 in 2015 not to recommend the Mahaffey case to a judge for a retrial, and possible release.

In 2015, TIRC recommended the reopening of the case of Jackie Wilson. Wilson was sentenced to life without parole for his role in the 1982 murders of police officers Robert O’Brien and William Fahey. Wilson claimed he was tortured into confessing.

In 2018, a judge ordered Wilson released on bond. Prosecutors appealed the ruling but in December 2019, the Illinois Appellate Court upheld the decision.

In 2021, Wilson sued in federal civil court for wrongful conviction. One of those named in the lawsuit was former prosecutor Lawrence Hyman. Hyman’s attorney, Ed Theobald, who has over thirty years of trial experience, filed a motion in the case questioning TIRC’s very constitutionality.

Theobald argued that nothing in the Illinois Constitution gives TIRC the power to recommend the release of a convicted murderer. That authority is granted solely to the governor.

At the same time, Theobald’s motion launches a broadside against Illinois Attorney General, Kwame Raoul, who, as a state senator, sponsored the legislation that created TIRC.

Theobald wrote: “Instead, both Jackie Wilson and Kwame Raoul have offered no constitutional rationale explaining how an administrative agency under the Executive Branch, appointed by the Governor, could create a re-do after Plaintiff Jackie Wilson was found guilty in two separate murder jury trial convictions by Illinois Courts. Under the Illinois Constitution, the Illinois Governor is the only Illinois Executive who can rescind or vacate final orders of the Judiciary, not Jackie Wilson’s criminal defense lawyers serving as the Director of TIRC or others not empowered by the Illinois Constitution of 1970.”