CHICAGO — An imprisoned former Chicago police commander accused of overseeing the torture of dozens of men — almost all of them black — to coerce confessions will keep his $3,000-a-month pension under a decision Thursday by the Illinois Supreme Court.
The justices ruled 4 to 3 that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan cannot challenge a police pension board vote preserving the payments to former police lieutenant Jon Burge. The court said allowing the challenge would be a ‘‘fundamental change’’ to the state’s pension process.
Madigan said she was ‘‘extremely disappointed’’ in the decision to ‘‘allow a torturer and convicted felon to receive his taxpayer-funded pension.’’
She did not immediately say if she would appeal to the Supreme Court.
Burge, perhaps the Chicago police force’s most infamous officer, is serving a 4½-year sentence in federal prison after being convicted of perjury in connection with testimony he gave in a civil case involving torture allegations.
More than 100 men have accused Burge and the officers under his command of shocking, suffocating, and beating them into giving false confessions during the 1970s and 1980s. The decorated former commander, now 66, has never been criminally charged with abuse.
The scandal has dogged the city for decades — in large part because of multimillion dollar settlements that the City Council has approved, each one accompanied by angry comments by aldermen about the fact that the city is forced to pay Burge’s pension.
All told, the scandal has cost the city more than $100 million.