A Cook County state’s attorney candidate once helped convict a boy whose murder confession was found to be coerced
Eileen O’Neill Burke is talking up protections for kids during police interrogations. But the former prosecutor is tied to a Black child’s wrongful conviction.
By Chip Mitchell
A Cook County state’s attorney candidate once helped convict a boy whose murder confession was found to be coerced
Eileen O’Neill Burke is talking up protections for kids during police interrogations. But the former prosecutor is tied to a Black child’s wrongful conviction.
By Chip MitchellA candidate for Cook County state’s attorney once prosecuted a Black boy on charges he murdered an elderly white woman when he was 10 years old. The conviction was thrown out by a federal judge who found the confession resulted from Chicago police coercion. Now, the same candidate is vowing to help strengthen protections for children under interrogation.
In 1994, assistant state’s attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke helped win a guilty finding on a first-degree murder charge against the boy, known only as “A.M.” The interrogation took place without a parent or police youth officer present. It also took place without an attorney for A.M. and without video recording — steps now required by state law.
As O’Neill Burke campaigns to be Cook County’s top prosecutor, WBEZ asked about A.M.’s case. She emailed a statement Tuesday afternoon.
“As a former prosecutor, criminal defense attorney, and judge, I have seen firsthand that our criminal justice system isn’t working,” O’Neill Burke’s statement said. “My views on juvenile justice have evolved, as has the law, since this 1994 case. I believe juveniles deserve every protection within our court system.”
The murder victim was Anna Gilvis, 83. On Oct. 5, 1993, her body was found in the bathroom of her Marquette Park home. Court records say she was beaten with a cane, her throat was slit and she was tied up with a phone cord. A gold watch and diamond ring were missing.
A blood trail signaled the 173-pound victim had been dragged from the kitchen to the bathroom, one of the boy’s appellate attorneys said. At the time, A.M. was 5 feet 1 inch and 88 pounds.
A bloody palm print was on the bathroom wall and a bloody shoe print was on the back porch. Neither could be matched to the boy, his appellate attorney said. Despite apparent struggle and ransacking, none of the boy’s fingerprints were found.
But CPD Det. James Cassidy said the boy confessed to him.
“When [the boy] sat alone in the police interrogation room, he was not even old enough to be caddy on a golf course under Illinois law,” a federal appellate court wrote later, adding he “had no prior experience with the criminal justice system.”
Cassidy kept challenging the boy’s initial statements and accused him of lying, the appellate court added, saying the detective was using “a technique which could easily lead a young boy to ‘confess’ to anything. No friendly adult, moreover, was present during the questioning. When a youth officer was brought in, there is no evidence that he did anything to protect” the boy’s rights.
Found delinquent
Exactly a year after the crime, the boy’s two-day trial began. He had turned 11.
During opening remarks at the trial, O’Neill Burke, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, described how the boy confessed to detectives: “[He] suddenly told police what really happened. He told officers he killed her because he hated her.”
Detective Cassidy, according to the Sun-Times, testified that the boy “burst out crying, his chest heaving, and said, ‘I hated her; I killed her; she called me a n***** almost every day.’ ”
Cook County Circuit Court Juvenile Court Judge Stuart F. Lubin declared the boy a delinquent on the murder charge on Oct. 6, 1994. He sentenced A.M. to five years probation, drawing public criticism that added to national hysteria about violence committed by Black children — a moral panic that, in subsequent months, led to a label for these kids: “superpredators.”
O’Neill Burke said after the sentencing the boy is “clearly a danger,” according to the Associated Press.
She blasted a state law that limited the judge’s ability to lock up young offenders. “[A.M.] went into an 83-year-old woman’s house, bludgeoned her and then stabbed her in the throat,” she said, according to the Chicago Tribune. “But [the law] only gives [the judge] a few options to choose from.”
The boy’s conviction survived on appeal. Then the state Supreme Court declined to take it up.
At that point, a separate Chicago case involving Cassidy factored in. He said he had taken self-incriminating statements from two Black boys, ages 7 and 8, in the 1998 sexual assault and killing of an 11-year-old girl, Ryan Harris, a case that made national headlines. A lab report later revealed semen on her clothing, something those preadolescent boys could not have produced.
O’Neill Burke, quoted in a 1999 Nation magazine article, praised the detective: “Officer Cassidy is the nicest, slightest man. That’s why they have him interview kids.”
The boys’ charges were thrown out. And DNA evidence led to a murder conviction of a 36-year-old man.
Cassidy’s role in the Harris case added weight to a petition for A.M. in federal court. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer ruled his arrest was illegal and his confession should have been thrown out because it resulted from coercion. She said the boy was never free to leave the police station where cops questioned him and that his parents or a police youth officer should have been present during the interrogation.
The federal appellate court upheld that ruling.
Efforts to reach Cassidy were unsuccessful.
State’s attorney race
O’Neill Burke, a former state appellate judge, faces Clayton Harris III in a March 19 Democratic primary that could be decisive in a race to replace State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who announced this year she would not run for a third four-year term.
Last week, O’Neill Burke and Harris said they would help strengthen Illinois requirements for children to get an attorney during police interrogations. Their pledges came in light of video footage showing a detective in suburban Lake County steering a 15-year-old to falsely confess to a shooting.
The video, obtained by WBEZ through an open-records lawsuit against the city of Waukegan, prompted a state senator to draft a bill raising the age at which a child must have an attorney present to be questioned in police custody.
O’Neill Burke said she looked forward to “working with lawmakers and other stakeholders to ensure funding and enforcement are provided in this important initiative as it continues to take shape.”
But she has not answered whether she would support the bill if it’s identical to an unsuccessful 2021 version that would have required an attorney for any child under 18 throughout a custodial police interrogation about any offense. That bill would have tightened a 2017 law that requires a lawyer for kids during interrogation only under age 15 and only after a murder or sexual offenses.
At least 30 Illinoisans have had serious felony convictions overturned based on new evidence since 2001 after confessing between ages 15 and 17, according to National Registry of Exonerations data analyzed by WBEZ. That number doesn’t include false confessions that have led to wrongful arrests without convictions, such as the Waukegan case.
Law enforcement groups including the Illinois Sheriffs’ Association and the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police have voiced opposition to requiring a lawyer for suspects under 18 throughout an interrogation, saying it would discourage teens from talking to police and make it too hard to solve crimes.
“My experience working in the court system has shown me what justice really means and is part of why I support a robust curriculum and training unit for prosecutors and a refashioned restorative justice bureau,” O’Neill Burke said in her Tuesday afternoon statement.
Chip Mitchell reports on policing, public safety and public health. Follow him at @ChipMitchell1. Contact him at cmitchell@wbez.org.