A man who says Chicago police beat him into confessing to the 1992 murder of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis is a step closer to finding out whether he’ll get a new trial.
One of Anthony Garrett’s attorneys battled a Cook County prosecutor in closing arguments Monday afternoon at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse.
The attorney, Jennifer Blagg, argued that retired Detective Richard Zuley, 79, coordinated her client’s torture. She tied the case to alleged Zuley-led coercion in a string of cases from 1987 to 2003, including four murder convictions that were later thrown out.
“He’s never in the room when the worst stuff happens, but he doesn’t have to be [because the officers] are all working together,” Blagg said.
She also likened Garrett’s case to torture that happened when Zuley was a U.S. Naval reservist at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. She recounted November testimony by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 55, who appeared via Zoom from Rotterdam, the Dutch city.
Slahi, a Sept. 11 terror suspect, alleged that Zuley subjected him to months of torture in 2003 at the notorious detention camp at Guantánamo.
Slahi wrote a memoir about the experience that formed the basis of a 2021 film drama starring Jodie Foster and Benedict Cumberbatch.
“The real Dick Zuley, I would submit to the court, is the one Mohamedou Ould Slahi saw,” Blagg said Monday.
But the prosecutor, Armando G. Sandoval, urged Judge Adrienne E. Davis to disregard claims against Zuley in other cases, calling them “allegations, not findings,” and saying they “have no connection to Garrett.”
“I’m not saying everything Slahi says is false,” Sandoval said. “But the court should be careful of treating the book … or the movie as objective.”
Sandoval also cast doubt on claims by Garrett that two large men wearing sports jerseys beat him at Zuley’s behest while he was shackled to an eyebolt, and that the two men focused many of their blows on a part of his leg where physicians had implanted a rod after a gunshot wound.
The prosecutor pointed to testimony that Garrett, after his interrogation, was not limping and did not seem to be injured.
Sandoval also noted Garrett’s initial claim that the beating took place with a rubber hose. The story changed years later, Sandoval said, when Garrett claimed it was carried out with the hose and a phone book.
“His account shifts,” Sandoval said. “That’s important.”
Dantrell was killed on Oct. 13, 1992, as he walked to school with his mother in Cabrini-Green, a former North Side public housing complex. Police said a sniper shot him from an upper floor of a building.
A jury convicted Garrett in 1994. Now 67, he’s imprisoned at downstate Centralia Correctional Center. He’s not scheduled for release until 2039, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Monday’s proceedings stem from a 2023 referral by the Illinois Torture and Relief Commission that detailed an “overwhelming” history of “lengthy and consistent” complaints alleging psychological and physical torture involving Zuley. He was hired by CPD in 1970 and worked more than three decades for the department.
Slahi, who knew Zuley as Capt. Collins, testified the detective led “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including isolation, temperature extremes, beatings, sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, waterboarding, barking dogs, a mock execution at sea, and round-the-clock mistreatment with strobe lights and a looped recording of the U.S. national anthem.
After 70 days of torture, Slahi testified, the detective convinced him that U.S. authorities were allowing his mother to be kidnapped and raped. Slahi admitted he never saw Zuley lay a hand on him but added that he wouldn’t know because he was usually blindfolded.
Slahi testified he eventually confessed to anything his interrogators fed him, starting with plans to attack Toronto’s CN Tower. He said he also falsely confirmed that many individuals had Al Qaeda links.
Slahi was held at Guantánamo for 14 years without charges before he was released to his native Mauritania in 2016. His memoirs about those years were published as a book that led to the film, “The Mauritanian,” directed by Kevin Macdonald.
At a November hearing, a prosecutor pressed Slahi about visits to Afghanistan in the early 1990s. Slahi answered he was working for U.S. allies there and cut Al Qaeda ties years before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Zuley testified at Feb. 18 and April 1 hearings in Garrett’s case. The former detective said he didn’t know of anyone at the police station handcuffing Garrett to the eyebolt or subjecting him to any physical or mental abuse.
Zuley testified he left other detectives in charge of Garrett overnight. The next morning, the former detective said, Garrett said he had fired at members of a rival gang near Dantrell. Garrett later signed a handwritten confession.
Threats and physical abuse, Zuley testified, were less reliable than “rapport building” for extracting information from suspects.
Judges have vacated at least four murder convictions involving Zuley. The exonerees are Lathierial Boyd, Lee Harris, Carl Reed and David Wright.
President Donald Trump’s administration blocked Garrett’s attorneys from questioning Zuley about his work at Guantánamo.
Judge Davis set the next hearing for July 14. She didn’t say when she would rule on Garrett’s petition for a retrial.