Cops rarely punished when judges find testimony false, questionable [View all]

Late last year, Judge William Hooks heard the kind of case that occurs at Cook County's main courthouse every day and that, in most instances, ends with a guilty verdict and the defendant headed off to prison. This time, though, the case came to a different conclusion.

At the center was a veteran Chicago police narcotics officer who testified that he and his partner had abandoned an undercover drug surveillance to stop a minivan for failing to signal for a right turn — and discovered about 2 1/2 pounds of cocaine in the vehicle.

Lawyers for the two men arrested in the case said the story did not ring true and asked the judge to throw out the charges before trial. There was no way, they said, that officers from a specialized narcotics unit would break away from their surveillance for a traffic stop.

Hooks agreed.

In language that was unusually blunt even for Hooks, the veteran jurist railed against what some other judges and lawyers who work in Cook County's criminal justice system say occurs far too often: police officers shading the truth in subtle ways or outright lying from the witness stand. The result, they said, is that sometimes the innocent go to prison, the guilty go free and the criminal justice system is tarnished.

Indeed, a Chicago Tribune investigation documented that troubling phenomenon, with more than a dozen examples over the past few years in which police officers, according to judges, gave false or questionable testimony — but experienced few, if any, repercussions.

It happened in court hearings that involved a $50,000 brick of cocaine and a $30 bag of heroin. It happened in gun cases in Cook County court and money-laundering hearings in federal court. It happened with big issues, such as whether the officers had witnessed a crime as it occurred, and with smaller details, such as the direction they were driving on patrol. And it happened with defendants who had a string of convictions and those who had no previous arrests.

Officers come to court well aware they have a built-in advantage because so many cases come down to their word against that of a defendant. As a result, they can testify with little fear of prosecution or discipline. The Chicago Police Department and the Cook County state's attorney's office almost never hold officers accountable in spite of claims they have a zero-tolerance policy for officers who do not tell the truth.

The issue so erodes trust in the criminal justice system that the U.S. Department of Justice, as part of its civil rights investigation into the Police Department, has asked the Cook County public defender's office to refer cases with evidence that officers testified falsely, the Tribune has learned.

Determining whether an officer lied on the witness stand or was simply mistaken can be difficult; a judge's ruling does not necessarily mean an officer intentionally testified falsely. Nonetheless, top police officials and prosecutors make little effort to get to the bottom of what some lawyers have come to call "testilying."

The exception: cases in which video undermines the testimony of the police officer. In those rare cases, prosecutors have acted.

The state's attorney's office, in response to inquiries from the Tribune, said Thursday that its Professional Standards Unit has begun a review of several cases to determine whether officers committed perjury. The office also issued a memo to all prosecutors reminding them of their duty to notify supervisors when an officer's conduct or credibility has been questioned, according to Sally Daly, an office spokeswoman.

What's more, the office said it would generate what is called a "disclosure notice" — a document that tells the defense that a witness's credibility has previously been called into doubt — for some of the cases highlighted by the Tribune. Prosecutors also are trying to determine why the notices had not already been generated in some of these cases. Numerous defense attorneys told the Tribune they have not received such notices in the past, let alone heard of such a document. State's Attorney Anita Alvarez also has ordered prosecutors to notify police agencies when a disclosure notice is generated about an officer....