STATE TO DROP CASES TIED TO SUSPECT COPS

110 Arrests Linked to 9 City Officers in Robbery Probe

Top Cook County prosecutors have ordered their staff to drop any case
that nine special operations officers had a significant role in
handling, which could nullify the arrests of 110 people charged in
gun, drug, burglary and violence cases, according to a memo
circulated in the Cook County state's attorney's office earlier this month.

In addition to cases handled by four Chicago police officers charged
with robberies and kidnappings, the memo also directs prosecutors to
drop cases handled by five other officers in the special operations unit.

Those officers have been stripped of their police powers in the
investigation but are not charged with a crime.

State's Atty. Richard Devine had earlier said his office planned to
review whether cases needed to be dropped, and the Sept. 12 memo
gives clear instructions to drop any case in which the nine officers
made the arrest, recovered physical evidence, signed a search warrant
or provided information from an informant that led to the arrest.

Bernard Murray, chief of felony prosecutions for the state's
attorney's office, said the memo was written to give prosecutors a
guideline on how to proceed on the cases.

"We made the decision to err on the side of caution. ... We are
trying to do the right thing," Murray said.

In the cases outlined in the memo, the nine officers were involved in
the arrests, he said.

"We cannot prove our cases," Murray said. "The cases where the
defendant was indicted and they were the main officers, we cannot
sustain the burden of proof."

The memo lists 110 arrests tied to the officers, and in two cases the
memo notes that the defendants also face murder charges.

One of the murder cases is against Orlando Benamon, charged in a July
2003 shooting on the West Side. Benamon was charged in that murder
about the same time that Officer Keith Herrera arrested him in a
drug-dealing case, prosecutors said.

The two charges have been moving through court proceedings together,
but Murray said the murder case should not be compromised by the
special-operations investigation because detectives not connected to
the arrests of the four officers investigated the slaying.

Prosecutors decided to drop the cases connected to the five officers
not charged because they doubt they could proceed with officers
stripped of their authority as witnesses. Those officers could
eventually be exonerated, Murray said, but "there's no timetable on
how long those investigations will take," and they can't put the
prosecutions on hold until they know whether their police witnesses
are tainted.

The memo lists 32 cases to be dropped under the names of the
uncharged officers.

Burglary, Battery, Drugs

Most of the cases involve drug-dealing or felony weapons charges or
both, according to the memo. One of the cases is for burglarizing a
house of worship, one is for battery that caused "great bodily harm,"
and several are for reckless discharge of a firearm. Most of the
cases are from this year, but a few go as far back as 2003.

The memo also directs prosecutors to start looking into convictions
they have already won that are linked to the officers. Prosecutors
have been directed to contact defense lawyers in those cases so they
can file motions to review the convictions, Murray said.

The state's attorney's office has made a priority of dropping cases
in which the defendants are in jail, according to the memo. In cases
in which defendants are in custody, "please advance, reset and [drop]
the case immediately," the memo said.

Prosecutors have said in recent weeks that the investigation
continues and that charges may soon be brought against more officers.
Earlier this month Officers Jerome Finnigan, Herrera, Carl Suchocki
and Tom Sherry were all charged with multiple counts of robbing and
kidnapping drug dealers and ordinary citizens in a pattern of
misconduct that stretched back to 2002.

False Arrests Alleged

Prosecutors have alleged the men stole hundreds of thousands of
dollars and falsely arrested many people. Although the Police
Department had been investigating numerous misconduct claims against
the men for years, the criminal case against them did not gain
traction until prosecutors became suspicious because the officers
consistently failed to show up in court to testify on significant
drug arrests they had made, officials said.

Authorities said they now believe many of those arrests were bogus,
and any cases the officers handled are suspect.

The memo links Herrera to 67 cases. Finnigan, accused of being the
ringleader of the schemes, is linked to 10 cases. Sherry is linked to
29 cases and Suchocki is linked to three cases. Some cases were
linked to more than one of the officers.