G. Flint Taylor

The Wilson Record

The Illinois Supreme Court had already held that Andrew Wilson's confession was coerced. Taylor's federal suit placed the torture allegations themselves before a jury under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, building a record of the interrogation chronology, the physical evidence, departmental practices, and repeated abuse complaints involving Area 2 officers.

In 1993, Taylor argued Wilson's Seventh Circuit appeal from a civil-rights trial in which the jury had found a constitutional violation. The second civil trial had let the defense present the underlying murders in graphic detail while excluding Melvin Jones — who said Commander Jon Burge and other officers had subjected him to electric shock nine days before Wilson's interrogation — and Donald White, who said the same officers had beaten him during the murder investigation.

Taylor focused the appellate record on individual responsibility for the abuse. The Seventh Circuit held that the crime evidence had overwhelmed the constitutional question and that the excluded accounts were relevant to intent, opportunity, preparation, plan, and impeachment. It ordered a new trial against Burge — restoring Wilson's route to retry the constitutional claim and preserving a path to individual accountability. Taylor carried the coercion and torture evidence forward, developing the record that would later anchor broader public recognition of what happened inside Area 2.

Hampton and the 37,000-Page Record

Taylor represented the plaintiffs on appeal in Hampton v. Hanrahan, the civil action arising from the 1969 raid that killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark and wounded four other Black Panther Party members.

The civil trial ran eighteen months and left behind a record of approximately 37,000 pages. Taylor helped master all of it for the appeal. The Seventh Circuit organized the evidence into the period before the raid, the raid itself, and the events that followed; it reversed as to most defendants and returned the liability claims for jury determination, reopening the plaintiffs' route to a new trial. Thirteen years after the raid, the litigation ended in a $1.85 million settlement.

The Hidden Street Files

George Jones was arrested, jailed, and prosecuted for murder before the charges were dropped. His civil suit exposed the mechanism: Chicago detectives' clandestine "street files," maintained outside the regular investigative files sent to prosecutors — parallel files that could hold exculpatory material the defense never saw. A jury awarded him $801,000.

Taylor represented Jones on appeal. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, holding that the evidence supported a conspiracy to railroad Jones and that the department-wide, long-standing street-file practice could be treated as a City custom consciously approved at the highest policymaking level. The appellate work connected one man's injury to a hidden municipal system — and preserved the municipal-liability finding against Chicago itself.

Limits on Absolute Immunity

Taylor also challenged the legal shields that can end a damages case before any jury reaches the underlying conduct. He argued Cleavinger v. Saxner before the U.S. Supreme Court for two federal prisoners who had won due-process verdicts against members of a prison disciplinary committee. The Court held that the committee members had qualified immunity rather than absolute immunity, because their function was not equivalent to that of an independent judge.

Eight years later, Taylor returned to the Supreme Court in Buckley v. Fitzsimmons for a Section 1983 plaintiff who alleged that prosecutors fabricated evidence during an investigation and made defamatory statements at a press conference. The Court held that prosecutors were not absolutely immune for investigative work of the kind detectives perform, or for statements to the press — functions with no connection to the judicial process. Those acts remained subject to ordinary qualified-immunity analysis rather than the absolute immunity attached to courtroom advocacy.

Together, the two decisions tied immunity to the official function rather than the official's title, and preserved damages routes for constitutional claims against officials acting outside protected judicial roles.

Judgment, Indemnification, and the Burge Record

A judgment is only a piece of paper until someone pays it. After Wilson's appeal produced a new trial against Burge, a $50,000 compensatory judgment was entered — and Taylor pursued the statutory route requiring a local government to satisfy judgments against employees acting within the scope of employment, carrying the matter from liability all the way through collection.

In 1997, the Seventh Circuit affirmed Chicago's payment obligation. It held that Burge acted within the scope of his police employment when he extracted confessions by improper means, and that federal ancillary jurisdiction permitted the court to decide the indemnification claim before the litigation ended. The civil judgment became enforceable against the municipal treasury.

Chicago's Police Board had fired Burge in 1993 after finding that he used torture. A later Section 1983 suit filed by Madison Hobley produced written discovery responses in 2003 in which Burge denied using coercive techniques or knowing that other officers had done so. Federal prosecutors alleged those answers were false and obstructed the civil proceeding. In 2010, a federal jury convicted Burge of two obstruction counts and one perjury count, and in 2011 he received a 54-month sentence. The federal charges relied in part on statements Burge made in the Hobley civil case and evidence developed through related survivor litigation.

Chicago Reparations

Taylor served as a negotiator in the 2015 reparations agreement, carrying survivor-led priorities into talks with the City's corporation counsel. He worked within a coalition of survivors, Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, Black People Against Police Torture, Amnesty International, aldermen, and other advocates on the agreement's funded reparations, services, public education, and official acknowledgment.

Chicago approved a $5.5 million fund together with a formal acknowledgment, counseling and other services, access to City Colleges and job training for eligible survivors and family members, a curriculum teaching the torture cases in the city's schools, and a permanent memorial. An administrative process determined eligibility; in January 2016, the City reported that 98 people had applied and that 59 survivors and families would begin receiving reparations.

The Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission investigates claims that torture produced confessions leading to convictions and provides a route to judicial review. In 2016, its jurisdiction expanded beyond officers connected to Burge.

In July 2026, survivors, advocates, and City officials broke ground in Washington Park on the permanent memorial promised in 2015. Construction began eleven years after the commitment — and after trials, appeals, disciplinary proceedings, civil discovery, a federal perjury prosecution, organizing, negotiation, and administrative review.

People's Law Office

Taylor is a founding partner of People's Law Office in Chicago. His practice includes plaintiff-side civil rights, police misconduct, wrongful convictions, and Section 1983 litigation.

Taylor's cases have moved from concealed files and excluded witnesses to appellate holdings, enforceable judgments, municipal accountability, reparations, and public remembrance.