In 1987 Madison Hobley was interrogated by Burge’s unit at Area Two about a fire in Hobley’s apartment building in which seven people died, among them his wife and infant son. Though the police could produce no written evidence of it at the trial, they said Hobley confessed, and he was convicted and sentenced to death. He’d later claim he’d been tortured and there was no confession, and early in 2003 outgoing governor George Ryan pardoned him on grounds of innocence. Hobley sued Burge and the other officers, and in November 2003, Burge was deposed by Hobley’s attorneys.
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Those who believed Burge tortured suspects, some of them innocent, and got away with it were delighted by Fitzgerald’s announcement — but also mystified. What was the deal with Hobley — who according to Governor Ryan had been one of the innocents? Why would federal prosecutors replay a 20-year-old state crime? At his press conference Tuesday to discuss the Burge indictment, Fitzgerald was asked about the Hobley case, and all he would say was that it’s proceeding.
Hobley didn’t come off well in the special prosecutor’s report. Looking at the individual stories told by Burge’s accusers, the report concluded that Hobley’s had so many holes in it he wouldn’t have been a credible witness against Burge and his men. But Feuer says the report, for whatever reasons, misrepresented what Egan and Boyle were told by the late Donald Hubert, the attorney they’d assigned to examine the Hobley case. When Feuer found out that Hubert’s report existed, he subpoenaed it.
