A divided Illinois Supreme Court has closed the door on an attempt by a man convicted of murder and armed robbery to use claims of police "torture" to suppress statements he made while detained by police.
However, all seven members of the state's high court agreed on the framework for lower court analysis of lawsuits accusing police of “torture” tactics to coerce confessions.
Justice Lisa Holder White wrote the 5-2 majority opinion, filed Feb. 16, noting it was the court’s first time confronting “questions of what constitutes a claim of torture under the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission Act and what standards apply when a circuit court reviews a claim referred by the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission.”
Illinois Supreme Court Justice P. Scott Neville Jr.
| illinoiscourts.gov
Justices Mary Jane Theis, David Overstreet, Joy V. Cunningham and Elizabeth Rochford joined the majority.
Justice P. Scott Neville wrote a dissent, joined by Justice Mary O’Brien.
The underlying case dates to September 1998 when Chicago police arrested Darrell Fair in conjunction with a fatal shooting from that July. While facing an indictment for three counts of first-degree murder and one of armed robbery, Fair began legal machinations to suppress statements made while in detention, as well as challenge police conduct and his access to legal representation.
After a jury trial found Fair guilty of one murder count by accountability, Fair used his sentencing statement to allege being chained to a wall, kicked and beaten, denied a lawyer and food. The trial judge said she believed those claims to be “an absolute lie,” Holder White wrote, and issued a 50-year prison sentence.
Fair continued to press his arguments through a postconviction petition and appeals, and in May 2011 filed a torture claim with the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission. In May 2013, that commission issued a finding of sufficient credible evidence, triggering a judicial review. Although a circuit court judge initially granted the state’s motion to dismiss that referral, a First District Appellate Court panel reversed and remanded the complaint.
After evidentiary hearings in the spring of 2019, a circuit court judge denied Fair relief, and in 2021 an appellate panel affirmed that denial, albeit on different grounds. That panel accepted some of Fair’s allegations as true, specifically being kicked by a CPD office, but agreed the lower court was correct in giving proper weight to the credibility of Adrian Mebane, the assistant state’s attorney who prepared a written statement during Fair’s September 1998 interrogation.
The appeals panel issued a supplemental order after denying Fair’s petition for rehearing in which it explained “under the Torture Act this court’s authority is restricted to consideration of the allegedly tortuous conduct triggering the referral to the circuit court.” When the Supreme Court agreed to hear Fair’s appeal, it also allowed support briefs from the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission; the Chicago Torture Justice Center; and the Innocence Project, together with The Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center, the People’s Law Office, and the Center on Wrongful Convictions.
An attorney from the Illinois Attorney General’s Office drafted the brief for the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission, while Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul also officially represented the state’s interest in arguing against Fair.
Holder White said Fair raised two issues on appeal: First, that the appellate court erred by not considering the impact to his overall case of his allegations that would not support standalone torture claims; and, second that the circuit court wrongly denied his claim.
Ultimately, Holder White said, the majority determined state law requires a circuit court to determine if a petitioner has sufficient evidence of torture, that it resulted in a confession and then a conviction, but “not to assess the voluntariness of statements or other constitutional claims that can be raised in a postconviction petition.” Holder White said that determination was contrary to forced confession precedent established in a 2019 First District Appellate Court opinion, People v. Wilson, and as such, that opinion is overruled.
The majority agreed with Fair that “courts need to look at the totality of the circumstances in evaluating a claim of torture." But the majority also agreed with the state’s position that the “circuit court did not manifestly err” by finding Mebane’s account credible and sufficient to deny Fair’s requested relief.
Neville opened his lengthy dissent by saying he believed the trial court "committed a manifest error by disregarding and ignoring Fair’s unimpeached and unrebutted testimony and by relying on the incompetent testimony of Mebane,” so labeled because Neville noted Mebane wasn’t present during the 30 hours of Fair’s interrogation and lacked the medical qualifications to “express an opinion on Fair’s physical condition and whether he had been deprived of food, medicine, or sleep for 30 hours.”
Despite that disagreement, Neville did support the majority’s view on the importance of considering the totality of circumstances, only going further by saying Fair’s allegations “were sufficient, individually or in combination, to constitute torture,” and that the police conduct “resulted in his inculpatory confession being used to obtain his conviction.”
Neville said Fair adequately alleged police interrogator Michael McDermott threatened Fair, denied food, sleep and medicine as well as deprived Fair of access to an attorney, while also claiming “McDermott was acting in conformity with this pattern and practice, established in other cases, of torturing suspects and detainees.”
The MacArthur Justice Center did not respond to a request for comment on the decision.