By John Conroy
One might think, then, that Morrissey’s unwillingness to listen to claims of a coerced confession was well-grounded. One might think that the battle is lopsided, a waste of time, a legal technicality required by a higher court. In fact, this battle is well drawn. Long-hidden police documents indicate that an investigator from the department’s own Office of Professional Standards revisited the case in 1993 and concluded that the El Rukn was more credible than the cops.
According to a detective who worked the gang’s territory in the 1980s, the El Rukns were fiercely loyal to each other in those days and imposed harsh internal discipline; someone in Cannon’s position, the detective says, would likely be more frightened of offending Fort than of offending the police, and a high-ranking member would never give up a comrade without some deal–immunity from prosecution, a light sentence, or some sort of protective custody arrangement. None of those things could be guaranteed by a policeman; and indeed the police claim that nothing was offered, that Cannon cooperated, all day, quite willingly.
Cannon says it is preposterous that he would willingly confess, indeed that he would make any statement willingly, without a lawyer present. Cannon had a previous murder conviction for which he had served 12 years, and he had been out of prison for less than a year. He had become conversant with the law during that incarceration (he had, for example, filed suit in federal court against the parole board and won a parole hearing that he had been denied). He clearly was one suspect who knew his rights, who knew what the result of a confession would be. Furthermore, Cannon claims that from the start of his arrest he was addressed as “nigger.” (Thirteen years later Dignan admitted in a deposition in a different case that “nigger” was a common salutation of his for African-American suspects.) Would an El Rukn general, who began the day standing naked before a shotgun, who knew that he faced serious prison time if convicted, who knew that he would incur the wrath of his comrades if he implicated McChristian, jump into a police car and start cooperating with detectives who called him “nigger”?
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Cannon complained to the Office of Professional Standards about the alleged torture within days of his arrest. OPS investigated and eventually declined to sustain any of the charges. Cannon’s attorney filed a motion in circuit court to suppress the signed statement his client gave a prosecutor in which he supposedly confessed; he submitted Cannon’s affidavit and drawings he’d made to convey his treatment at the officers’ hands. Judge Thomas Maloney ruled against Cannon, saying that he had seen cattle prods on his own farm and that he did not believe they could fit into a car’s glove compartment.
As the trial neared, Cannon’s court-appointed attorney told him that because of his previous murder conviction he would have a hard time prevailing. The city offered to settle out of court for $3,000. Cannon was furious, but he took the money.
