The complaint alleged that in January 1987 while investigating the act of arson which killed Hobley’s wife and infant son, the detectives of the Area Two Violent Crimes Division, which Burge commanded, attempted to coerce a confession from Hobley by beating him, suffocating him with a plastic typewriter cover, using racially offensive language and repeatedly threatening him.
Hobley contended that the conduct he described was part of “a pattern and practice of torture of subjects by Area Two Violent Crimes detectives” and noted that the CPD’s own Office of Professional Standards (“OPS”) had concluded that police command members, including Burge, were aware of systematic and methodical physical abuse and had perpetuated it, either by actively participating or failing to stop it.
Wilson maintained that while he was at Area Two, he was beaten, kicked, smothered with a plastic bag, burned with a cigarette, given a succession of electronic shocks on his ears, genitals, and back, stretched across a hot radiator, and had a loaded gun placed in his mouth and cocked.
Furthermore, Burge knew or reasonably should have anticipated that Wilson’s testimony in his civil rights case could (and indeed would) encourage other potential plaintiffs to file similar suits, spark an internal police board investigation into his conduct, and form the basis of a later criminal prosecution.
Congress thus presumably made a careful judgment as to what generally objecting to Wilson’s testimony based on his repeated invocation of the Fifth Amendment, Burge identifies eight specific lines of inquiry which he was unable to pursue, arguing that they are relevant to Wilson’s motive to fabricate: (1) Wilson’s “guilty state of mind after the murders and while he was in police custody.” Resp. at 17.