In the 1980s, corruption and misconduct plagued the South Side police stations of Chicago. On multiple occasions, the officers would use extreme and illegal methods to gather false confessions to convict innocent people. In this blog I’m going to be talking about the case of LeRoy Orange, a man who was tortured and abused by the Area 2 police officers in South Side Chicago. They tortured him until he was willing to confess and throw his life away just to make it stop. These types of cases are difficult to discuss, but it is important that people are informed about them so they understand the injustice that can happen in the criminal justice system. This happened in the 80s, and hopefully the criminal justice system has moved on and improved from here.

The case of LeRoy Orange originates with him being accused of being involved in the murder of four people. On January 11th, 1984, four bodies, including a child, were found stabbed in an apartment that had been lit on fire. The day after the crime was committed, Orange and his half brother Leonard Kidd were detained by the police. When detained by the cops, Kidd had a man in the apartment’s watch on his wrist, which obviously showed some sort of involvement. Kidd responded to this clue by saying they were at the apartment earlier, but left when men with knives came in, because they feared for their safety. He also told the officers he waited outside and saw the men with knives leave, and one of them had a blood covered jacket. The police didn’t seem to buy it. After this, both Orange and Kidd went into separate interrogations for hours on end. This is where the story gets even more ugly, especially for Orange.

The Area 2  police officers wanted to get a conviction from both Kidd and Orange, and were willing to do anything necessary in order to get it. They tortured him and tortured him throughout his twelve or so hour interrogation until he confessed to what they wanted and answered their clearly suggestive questions. With statements from both Kidd and Orange that implied they were guilty, a grand jury charged them with several crimes, including murder.

From there the family sought a private counsel, Earl Washington, to represent both men. Washington eventually saw an obvious problem with representing both men and dropped Kidd. LeRoy Orange went to trial in 1985 to prove his innocence. He took the stand and gave a truthful account of what happened. He admitted to being at the apartment of the people that were killed, but said he left before the crime occurred, while Kidd remains at the apartment. Orange also discussed the torture he endured that caused him to confess in the first place. On top of Orange’s testimony, Kidd took the stand, saying he committed the crime by himself without Orange being involved or knowing about it. Naturally, the prosecution used Orange’s confession as the foundation of their case. They also brought in officers from the police department involved as physicians to discredit the claims made by Orange about the case and the torture. Unfortunately, Orange was still found guilty by the jury and put on death row. They also put Kidd on death row, which later turned into a life sentence in 2003 by the Governor.

In Orange’s appeals, he had to go through a long process trying to get a hearing; he received help from Thomas F. Geraghty, the Director at Bluhm Legal Clinic, to help him prove his innocence and get fair treatment in the criminal justice system. Eventually, with the hearing still in the works, the Governor pardoned Orange of all charges, granting him his freedom.

I talked about the South Side Chicago Officers before in a blog I wrote about Darrell Cannon. These officers did what they did to Cannon on multiple occasions to multiple innocent parties. As time went on these officers faced some consequences, and Orange and Cannon’s cases show a terrible example of misconduct by the police department. The murder of the four people is a tragedy, however Orange didn’t do it. It took way too long for Orange to be innocent, and on multiple occasions the criminal justice system failed to free Orange. It took the Governor to free him, when the system should have done its job and freed him long before. The criminal justice system needs to learn from cases like these so they don’t happen again.

 

 

Sources: https://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations/il/leroy-orange.html

https://www.bestcareercounselingdegrees.com/10-famously-exonerated-death-row-inmates/