Aaron Patterson

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When Aaron Patterson was falsely accused the first time and subsequently served 17 years on death row, immediately upon release he went to work-taking care of the business of and seeing ‘bout the people. Patterson, working in coalition with other groups impacted on every issue affecting the lives of Black and other oppressed people. Once again, falsely accused, Patterson needs the same people to come see ‘bout him . . .
Unanswered questions from the People about the Aaron Patterson Trial . . .
-Why? has the powerful Daley administration targeted Aaron Patterson?
-Why? was Aaron Patterson arrested by a collaboration of law enforcement agencies in August 2004; on the same exact day that Chicago’s infamous Lt. Jon “The Torturer” Burge was returned to Chicago to answer a court deposition in reference to his torturing of Aaron Patterson and other Black men?
-Why? would the federal government have jurisdiction in what would under any other circumstances be considered a state case?
-Why? were Michael P. Cronin, Joe Gorman Jr., and other special law enforcement officials who are heavily connected to Mayor Richard M. “Gangster” Daley, conducting surveillance, and subsequently arrested Aaron Patterson?
-Why? hasn’t the federal government charged “Gangster” Daley, Cook County States Attorney Dick Devine, and former police Lt. Jon “The Torturer” Burge for their roles in the torture, framing and subsequent sentencing of Aaron Patterson, Anthony Porter, Jackie and Andrew Wilson, David Bates, Stanley Howard, The Death Row 10, Madison Hobley, and countless of other African and Latino men?
-Why? would Dick Devine, the current Cook County States Attorney, along with Robert Shapiro, employed by the State’s Attorney’s office when Daley was States Attorney, be present at the press conference that announced the federal charges against Aaron Patterson?
-Why? shortly after Aaron Patterson ran for State Representative against Daley appointee Patricia Bailey who used a ghost address; shortly after disrupting a February 2004 press conference convened by Mayor Richard M. Daley and attended by U.S. Attorney Peter Fitzgerald, and Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Kline: did Patterson receive threatening phone calls stating that he was a marked man?
-Why? would the government allege that Mr.Patterson who 1). put up $100,000 (one hundred thousand dollars) of the money he was to receive from the state for restitution for his 17 years of false incarceration to bond out another death row prisoner; 2) previously turned down several attempts by the city to settle for several million dollars: Why would Mr. Patterson have any interest or need to sell drugs?
-Why? would the government go inside the state jail, get a known gang leader and admitted drug dealer Mario “Fox” Maldrona, place a wire on him, pay him $6, 500 (six thousand five hundred dollars) of your hard-earned tax dollars, and tell him to set up Aaron Patterson.
-Why? is it that in the same exact Federal Court Building, 219 S. Dearborn in Chicago, Illinois, where Black Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale was literally chained and gagged under the watch of Federal Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, Aaron Patterson was beat, handcuffed, and kicked by U.S. Marshals.
-Why? has Aaron Patterson been denied bond?
-Why? would Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer ban Aaron Patterson from his own court proceeding? In his absence, without his permission or knowledge, Pallmeyer dismissed his previous attorney and designated a former FBI agent, and a member of the “Gangster” Daley created Hispanic Democratic Organization, to be Patterson’s legal counsel?
-Where? are all the videotape footage and documents that were seized from Aaron Patterson’s home in proof of the counter surveillance that he was engaging in to show how he was being targeted by the powerful “Gangster” Daley machine via the Federal Government?
-Why? would the court appointed defense attorney for Aaron Patterson enter a motion that Patterson’s visitation and phone calls be terminated?
-Why? were there no African American males allowed on Mr. Patterson’s jury; in a court that is supposed to provide you with a jury of your own peers?
-Why? have the courts allowed there to be dogs, extra ID scans, humiliating searches, and other forms of harassment to deter people from coming to see what is occurring at 219 S. Dearborn, Room 2119?
-Why? hasn’t the Chicago press reported the continuous arbitrary beatings and banning from court of the supporters of Aaron Patterson?
-Why? have the court designated defense attorneys, turned down evidence in favor of Patterson, and have not even interviewed the countless number of people who want to attest to how Aaron Patterson positively impacted their lives and how Patterson is a true asset to the community?
-Why? when in open court, in plain view of court jurors, after a physical altercation between Aaron Patterson and Rebecca Pallmeyer’s personally appointed defense attorneys Tommy Brewer and Paul Camerena then—who are supposed to represent Aaron Patterson—could these court designated attorneys and the court in general proceed with this legal lynching of Aaron Patterson?
-Why? have many of Chicago’s Black Ministers as well as a number of progressive white ones, stated in private that although they know Mr. Patterson is being targeted and framed, they fear reprisals if they speak publicly on this blatant miscarriage of justice?
-Why? has not one elected official come to 219 S. Dearborn to see what is occurring in courtroom 2119?
-Why? did Chicago Sun Times federal court reporter Natasha Korecki ask a U.S. Marshall “How should we report this?” after witnessing the marshals beat Aaron Patterson and a 58 year old African American woman in court?
-How? has Judge Pallmeyer deemed Mr. Patterson sane enough to stand trial; but not sane enough to defend himself?
-Why? have both Aaron Patterson and former Governor George Ryan who granted the pardon for Patterson and implemented the moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois, be designated to have their cases heard by the same Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer?
-Why? did a combination of armed federal agents and U.S. Marshalls, with dogs and bullet-proof vests at 7:00 a.m. surround the home of the widow of slain Black Panther leader Chairman Fred Hampton, and question the family as to why they come to court for Aaron Patterson?
-Since being detained at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Why? is Aaron Patterson being isolated and his support mail derailed? However, Patterson continuously receives hate mail similar to that sent to different organizations in the 1960s (see U.S. COINTELPRO program) in order to create dissent and break morale. In addition, Patterson’s co-defendant has received hate mail urging him to turn state against Patterson.
-Why? has there been minimal if any press coverage of the attacks that Mr. Patterson has been subjected to, and the recent death of one of his two co-defendants?
-Why? on July 27th did Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer designate that only prosecutors and their team, her personally appointed “defense attorneys” Tommy Brewer and Paul Camerena, the press, the U.S. Marshals, and the F.B.I. are the only one allowed in the court? No Aaron Patterson and no Aaron Patterson supporters are allowed.

www.myspace.com/freeaaronpatterson

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PACK THE COURTHOUSE! PACK THE COURTHOUSE! PACK THE COURTHOUSE!

Aaron Patterson’s motion for a retrial will be on Wednesday, February 28th. It is imperative that the people support this soldier at this critical time. Come PACK THE COURTHOUSE!

When? Wednesday February 28th 9:00 a.m.

Where? 219 S. Dearborn, Chicago, IL 60604

“If we don't stop fascism, it'll stop us all!”

-Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton

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Hearing latest chapter in downfall of former death row inmate
By DON BABWIN | Associated Press Writer
5:58 PM CDT, July 20, 2007
CHICAGO - Aaron Patterson's story of being convicted of two murders after he was tortured by police helped convince a governor to set him free and empty Illinois' death row.
He became a symbol of a badly broken criminal justice system and a hero for death penalty opponents worldwide.
But on Friday, Patterson was just another jail inmate in an orange jump suit waiting to be sentenced on weapons and drug charges -- though he wasn't waiting quietly. As happened several times during his latest trial, the 41-year-old was dragged yelling and kicking from a courtroom after angrily denouncing the judge and the legal system he claims is railroading him again.
"There ain't no justice in this courtroom," he yelled just before several marshals pried his fingers from his chair and wrestled him to the ground.
The outburst marked the latest chapter in the story of a man who came to national attention in January 2003, when then-Gov. George Ryan announced he was pardoning Patterson and three other men and commuting to life in prison the death sentences of all 167 death row inmates.
Ryan said in a speech that he was convinced Patterson -- who proclaimed his innocence for 17 years in prison, 13 on death row -- did not commit the murders for which he'd been convicted.
Ryan told of Patterson's torture by Chicago police, how they suffocated him with a plastic typewriter cover and beat him. He spoke of how when left alone, Patterson proclaimed his innocence in the only way he could -- with a message scrawled on a bench with a paper clip.
"Listen to these chilling words," the governor said. "`I lie about murders, police threaten me with violence slapped and suffocated me with plastic ... signed false statement to murders."'
When released from prison, Patterson announced he was devoting his life to exposing corruption and police misconduct. He promised to not forget the men still in prison cells.
"When he was coming out they were pulling on his coat tails, 'Don't leave me behind, don't leave me behind,"' his mother, Jo Ann Patterson, said in an interview this week.
Within hours, he was meeting privately with Ryan, pleading with the governor to reduce sentences for some other inmates.
Others pardoned by Ryan kept somewhat of a low profile, but Patterson kept talking, cursing, yelling. Just like when he was in his cell writing countless letters, badgering his lawyers and other supporters to do more and do it quickly, Patterson would not go away.
Authorities could see Patterson's activities too. But they also saw something else: A man who went to prison a vicious gang leader, remained one in prison and stayed one when he got out.
"A review of the last 20 years of Patterson's life reveals an unbroken string of crime and violence," they wrote in a 40-page brief after a jury found him guilty last July in the latest case against him.
They said Patterson's story about how he was conducting a "reverse sting" -- as part of his own investigation of police corruption -- when he was arrested in 2004 was nonsense.
He was a gang leader pure and simple, they contended, and even from behind bars he helped mastermind gang activities.
And, they said, when he got out he brokered heroin sales to a government witness, sold marijuana and illegally bought a machine pistol and other guns.
Whatever he was doing, Patterson was doing it quickly.
"What drove him was this feeling of all those lost years and wanting to change things when he got out," said Flint Taylor, one of his lawyers at the time. "He wanted to change the world overnight." He spoke out about police corruption. He spoke out against the war in Iraq and on behalf of laid off workers. He talked constantly to reporters, who knew he would never turn down interview requests. And when they weren't calling him, he was calling them, asking if they'd made any progress on scandals he'd told them about or looked into the cases of other innocent prison inmates.
Then there was the time in 2003 when he called the media to say he was taking out a $100,000 loan, using the money he expected from the state for wrongfully convicting him to post bond for a former gang leader he'd known since their days on death row.
The next year he ran for the Illinois House. He lost badly, but not before raising eyebrows by using current and former gang members as campaign staff. "I done many great things in this community," Patterson yelled in court Friday.
His pace never slowed, his mother said. If he wasn't trying to get friends jobs he was lecturing kids on the street to stop doing drugs, she said, or he was answering the constantly ringing phone.
"He just couldn't get focused," she said. He'd talk about going back to school or learning how to use a computer, but she said he couldn't stand to wait the few seconds to turn her computer on.
Then there was something else, something more ominous than an inability to concentrate.
"He was very paranoid about somebody's after him," she said. She recalled how out of fear that someone might be sneaking up on him, he insisted that she tell him whenever she went to bed or simply walked from room to room. And how he had a fence built around the house because he didn't want anyone to see him inside or know when he was climbing into a car.
He never got the psychological help his mother said he obviously needed. Taylor said the resources just weren't there.
"He thought he was OK and he wasn't," Patterson's mother said. "He still isn't."
U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer said she hoped to sentence Patterson on Monday.

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Former death row inmate not to be sentenced until August
By DON BABWIN | Associated Press Writer
5:48 PM CDT, July 24, 2007
CHICAGO - A judge abruptly adjourned a sentencing hearing for former death row inmate Aaron Patterson Tuesday when he disrupted the hearing, loudly questioning whether the judge was even listening.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, who earlier told attorneys that after the end of the day's testimony the hearing would resume Aug. 14, did not argue with Patterson.

The exchange came in the third day of testimony in the sentencing hearing for Patterson on drug and weapons charges.
Pallmeyer, who appeared exasperated after several witnesses appearing on behalf of Patterson told the same stories, had just asked a witness to make a point about Patterson in one sentence.

"Don't even answer that, don't even answer," Patterson told the witness, Fred Hampton Jr., an activist and son of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton, who was killed in 1969 when Chicago police raided his apartment. "She ain't listening to anything you say, anyway."

Patterson, who was dragged from the courtroom yelling and kicking by marshals several times during his trial and again on Friday, was led out of the courtroom, but did not fight the marshals.

Because of scheduling conflicts among the judge and attorneys in the case, the next open date for the proceedings to resume was Aug. 14.

Patterson, 43, was released from prison in 2003, and his case became a symbol for death penalty opponents worldwide. But in 2005 a jury convicted him on drug and gun charges.

The hearing has featured several Patterson supporters, including actor and rapper Mos Def, taking the witness stand to tell of his activities as a community activist. Patterson has spoken extensively about the death penalty, police corruption and men still in prison he insisted were, as he was, not guilty of the crimes for which they were committed.

"He jumped right into the battle trying to help everyone," said Mary L. Johnson, a Chicago resident who began visiting Patterson in the early 1990s as part of her work with the Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

Patterson gained international fame when he was one of four men pardoned by then-Gov. George Ryan, who also reduced to life in prison the death sentences of every inmate on the state's death row as part of a stinging rebuke of capital punishment.

Patterson spent 17 years in prison -- 13 on death row -- after being convicted of two murders. He has always maintained he did not commit the murders, and he said -- and Ryan said he believed him -- that he was tortured by Chicago police.

When arrested in 2004 on drug and weapons charges, Patterson said he was just trying to expose police corruption. Prosecutors contended that the arrest stemmed from gang activities.
www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/illinois/chi-ap-il-pattersonsentenci,0,3899383.story

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www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/illinois/chi-ap-il-pattersonsentence,0,3637235.story
chicagotribune.com
Former death row inmate turned advocate gets 30 years in prison

By MICHAEL TARM

Associated Press Writer

9:57 PM CDT, August 14, 2007

CHICAGO


Former death row inmate Aaron Patterson faced the day of his sentencing the same way he faced many others during the latest criminal proceedings against him: screaming and cursing.

The man who gained international fame as a symbol of a badly broken criminal justice system harangued prosecutors and denounced U.S. District Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer just before she sentenced him Tuesday to 30 years in prison for trading in guns and drugs.

Patterson, who prosecutors claimed coordinated gang activities even as he served 17 years in prison for a double murder he insists he didn't commit, made a 45-minute expletive-laden statement to the court before his sentence was read.

"You're going to put me down for a high sentence, but I'll be back. Back with a vengeance," said the 43-year-old Patterson, his hands and ankles bound as he spoke from the defense table. "I'm expendable, but I'm not scared of no time."

The day began in much the same way, with Patterson walking into the courtroom and yelling at a clearly exasperated Pallmeyer.

"I'm trying to get some truth here," he shouted at her. "Are you scared of the truth?" Pallmeyer called a brief recess and when the proceeding resumed, Patterson -- who faced repeated reprimands for angry outbursts during the four-day hearing -- was mostly calm and quiet.

But just before Pallmeyer read his sentence, Patterson asked to be led from the room, indicating he would react badly to anything the judge said.

He was taken out immediately, but his supporters still made themselves heard. As the court session ended, someone from the gallery shouted, "This is a modern-day lynching!"

Patterson spent his 17 years in prison, 13 of them on death row, proclaiming his innocence and claiming he was framed by Chicago homicide detectives who tortured him. In January 2003, then-Gov. George Ryan pardoned him, saying there was no credible evidence against him. Ryan also pardoned three other men and commuted the sentences of all other death row inmates to life without parole.

After his release, Patterson gained international fame and pledged to spend his life exposing police misconduct and corruption. He filed a lawsuit against city and county officials who sent him to death row and refused a $4 million settlement offer from the city.

"When he came out, he hit the ground running ... fighting for social justice," said Wallace Bradley, one of several character witnesses who testified on Patterson's behalf Tuesday.

But in sentencing Patterson for his 2005 conviction on the drug and gun charges, Pallmeyer cited his violent behavior in prison and earlier as a teenager, including when he once shot someone in the face. She called Patterson talented and said he should have done more with his life after being pardoned.

"It's a real tragedy that a man with such obvious brains and charisma ... did not use those skills as he could have," Pallmeyer said.

She also dismissed Patterson's claims he never got a fair trial, singling out his repeated outbursts.

"The only thing that stood between Mr. Patterson and a fair trial was Mr. Patterson himself," she said.

During the trial, prosecutors used witnesses and secretly made recordings to convince jurors he had arranged several heroin sales to a government witness, sold marijuana and illegally bought four guns, including a MAC-10 machine pistol.

Patterson claimed he had sought to buy replicas -- not real guns. His attorneys told jurors he was investigating wrongdoing by law enforcement officials and ended up being set up by the very officials he had been investigating.

At his trial, Patterson was dragged from the courtroom yelling and kicking by marshals several times; one of his lawyers was released from the case before the trial started after she staged two tearful walkouts.

In pleading for a leniency Tuesday, Patterson's lawyer pointed to his time on death row for a crime she said he didn't commit and to his activist work since being released.

"This man is not the monster that the government wants us to believe he is," Andrea Gambino said. "The sum total of a man is not the bad things he did when he was young."

Prosecutors countered that Patterson used his fame as cover for his criminal activities, believing his highly publicized release from death row would make him "untouchable."

During his statement, Patterson showed no hint of remorse.

"You want me to admit I did something wrong," he said. "Ya'll need to admit you did something wrong."

He also summed up his character on such colorful display for years.

"I'm like a firecracker," he said. "I make a loud bang and I'm gone. ... Hopefully, I'll be back."