Let’s start with the good news.
If Harold is watching, I know there’s a smile on your face. If not, I’m smiling double-wide for you this morning. Long-time Chicago machine boss and Trump real estate lawyer “Slow Eddie” Burke is finally bound for jail. Yes, it’s not the kind of jail where you or I might be sent, and yes, he’ll be back on the streets in a matter of months. But still, I never imagined he would ever do a day behind bars.
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Ed Burke, Chicago's longest-serving alderman, reported to prison Monday. Burke said goodbye to family and friends before heading to Federal Correctional Institution Thomson in western Illinois, prison officials said Monday. Burke, who was found guilty of jilting the taxpayers, will now receive room and board courtesy of the taxpayers.
The not so good…
Burke was caught on undercover video in a clear-cut case of corruption that he fought and lost, but didn't appeal. U.S. prosecutors, who had been after Burke for decades but never succeeded in taking him to trial, wanted a 10-year sentence.
As my readers know, I’m not usually on the side of prosecutors in these matters, but in this case, 10-years would have meant the city was free of him for good.
"I think the message you could send is when you're that powerful, and you have so many friends in high places, it can help you, even when you have to go to prison, because the prison sentence was relatively light," ABC7 political analyst Laura Washington said.
Washington said former Finance Committee Chairman Burke's two-year sentence in federal prison and $2 million fine was a minimal response from the court, but the fact that there was a sentence at all still makes a statement.
STOP IT…
Marcellus Williams is scheduled for execution in Missouri today even though there is no reliable evidence proving that he committed the crime for which he was sentenced to death.
The State destroyed or corrupted the evidence that could conclusively prove his innocence and the available DNA and other forensic crime-scene evidence does not match him. There is far too much uncertainty in this case to allow Mr. Williams to be executed, particularly when the victim’s family believes life without parole is the appropriate sentence.