Statement from the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.
The Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR) greets the commutation of Gerald Reed’s life sentence today by Governor J. B. Pritzker as a courageous act to set right a terrible crime against a Black man committed 31 years ago. Now we need to finish the job of freeing all survivors of police torture who were convicted by confessions coerced by police and dismantling the prison industrial complex as a whole.
Reed was convicted of a double murder in 1990 after he was tortured by detectives working under the notorious Jon Burge and falsely confessed. He won a new trial after his case was referred to the court for review by the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (TIRC), only to have another judge in the same court resentence him to life in prison without a trial.
