What do you do when the officers that are supposed to protect and serve the public are the ones torturing their suspects? Not in a Third World country, but in the city of Chicago.
If you’re a civil rights attorney, you stand up and defend the rights of those being abused — regardless of whether the fight takes three decades, the tortured have been jailed as long as you’ve been alive, or you’re a recent Notre Dame Law School graduate drawn to the effort.
The sixth and final episode of the “Proving Innocence” series focuses on Jackie Wilson, who was wrongfully imprisoned for 36 years after his brother killed two Chicago police officers in 1982. Wilson and others were beaten, suffocated and shocked into false confessions in a systematic torture scandal that was hidden for decades until it was exposed by civil rights crusaders who are inspiring the next generation.
Wilson spoke to the Exoneration Justice Clinic in September 2021.