Anyone see Alan Derschowitz last night.....

<snip>ALAN DERSHOWITZ: I wanna bring this debate to the forefront.It's going to happen.And if it's going to happen we can't just close our eyes and pretend that we live in a pure world.

MIKE WALLACE: And, he says, since it's going to happen, we might as well make it legal -- by having judges issue what he calls "torture warrants" in rare cases.

ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Get a warrant.Justify in front of the judge the fact that this is the only conceivable way to save thousands of lives which are imminently in danger.

MIKE WALLACE: Torture warrants -- I must say, it sounds medireview.

ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Well, it sounds like a contradiction in terms because torture sounds illegal and a warrant sounds legal.My suggestion is that we bring it into the legal system so that we can control it, rather than keeping it outside of the legal sytem where it exists in a netherland of winked approval.

KENNETH ROTH: Alan Dershowitz has been spending too much time in the lecture circuit.He should go back to the classroom for a bit.

MIKE WALLACE: Kenneth Roth, a former federal prosecutor, is now Executive Director of Human Rights Watch.

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The repeated practice of torture by Chicago police came to light in the late 1980s and early 1990s.3 One case involved Andrew Wilson, who was accused (and later convicted) of shooting and killing police officers William Fahey and RichardO'Brien on February 9, 1982.4 When Wilson was questioned on February 14 at the South Side Area 2 station, he suffered multiple injuries: he claimed that officers supervised by Commander Jon Burge tortured and brutalized him during an interrogation that lasted for seventeen hours.5 He claimed electric shocks were administered to his head and genitals and that police cranked a "black box" to produce electric currents after clips were attached to parts of his body; Wilson was also allegedly stretched over a hot radiator and burned.6

The People's Law Office, an activist firm, conducted an investigation and identified sixty-five suspects who were tortured by Burge or other officers and detectives between 1972 and 1991 in Areas 2 and 3.7 A report by the police investigatory agency, the Office of Professional Standards (OPS), found that physical abuse "did occur and that it was systematic....{T}he type of abuse described was not limited to the usual beating, but went into such esoteric areas as psychological techniques and planned torture. The evidence presented by some individuals convinced juries and appellate courts that personnel assigned to Area 2 engaged in methodical abuse."8

After the city settled the claim of thirteen-year-old Marcus Wiggins, who alleged electric shock by Burge's detectives, the attorneys representing Wiggins fought for the release of the department's internal documents related to the case and its investigation, noting that the police are public servants and that issues of public safety and general public interest were at stake. The city and police union had argued to protect the privacy interests of the officers named in the files and a supposed chilling effect that would negatively affect future police internal investigations.9 The court found in favor of the public's right to know, stating:

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