James Gibson is a busy man. The 59 year-old has his hand in a number of projects, from starting an investment firm to writing an autobiography to producing music. He feels he has no time to waste because he spent nearly 30 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
“I lost everything,” he said. “I never had a chance to serve my country. I never had no kids. I never had a chance to get married. I don’t know what it feel[s] like to be feeling emotions. I don’t know what it feel[s] like [to have] human contact.. [The] only thing I had was God.”
Gibson said he still struggles with night sweats, the effects of being incarcerated, and the trauma of his torture at the hands of Chicago police officers linked to disgraced former Cmdr. Jon Burge.
Earlier this year, City Council members approved $14.75 million to settle his civil lawsuit against the city of Chicago.
It was just a drop in the bucket. And Gibson is not alone.
This year marks a new record, as city leaders have so far agreed to pay more than $266 million to resolve a wide range of police misconduct lawsuits. But the largest settlements and judgments, this year and in the past, have been reserved for people who spent years, if not decades, behind bars following a wrongful conviction.
After the city washes its hands and the news cameras move on, for people like Gibson, what happens next? Do these payments help bring them closure or a sense that justice has been served?
There is no system tracking outcomes, and no easy answers. And while no one we spoke to believes that money alone will ever heal such deep wounds, they tend to agree that the acknowledgment of their suffering and the attempt at recompense are important steps on the path to making things right.
A blessing and a curse
Mark Clements estimates he’s worked with “literally hundreds” of people who served time in the Illinois Department of Corrections for crimes they didn’t commit. A torture survivor of the Burge era like Gibson, Clements spent 28 years behind bars before his own wrongful conviction was overturned in 2009. Since that time, he’s been a full-time community organizer, helping free other wrongfully convicted people and advocating for people whose lives have been upended by police violence and incarceration.
Clements says the people who seem to have held onto their settlements the longest tend to be those who have gotten out of town, away from the news coverage.
There are already countless hurdles facing anyone leaving prison: the struggle to find work and housing with the stigma of having been incarcerated, coping with the trauma of their arrest and incarceration, acclimating to the technological and societal changes of the outside world.
For those whose large settlements or judgments are widely publicized, their trauma might make them particularly vulnerable to poor financial decisions or exploitative relationships. If they come from underserved communities, which they typically do, they might lack the financial literacy to effectively manage their money.
“I would say that most people who received millions of dollars suffered trauma upon trauma just trying to balance [it],” said Clements. “What we have watched is people that have gotten this money, they have self-decayed.”
Clement’s friend Eric Caine was one such person. He was known as a kind and gentle spirit, even after spending 25 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. After his exoneration in 2011, Caine was awarded a $10 million settlement. After attorney fees, he took home about $6.5 million, which Clements says is typical.
But he spent it within a few short years.
“He had to spend some portion of that time homeless,” Clements said. “Can you imagine having all that money and ending up being homeless?”
In a 2015 interview, Caine said that he never forgave himself for succumbing to police torture and signing that false confession. He also never received treatment for the trauma of the torture, two years in solitary confinement and 25 years in prison. Caine struggled to reacclimate after his release and felt like he was living under a microscope, with local law enforcement constantly looking for a reason to rearrest him.
“I know they would take any opportunity, any chance, anything that comes up to try to either put me back where they really believe I belong or to somehow redeem themselves,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is, I was never that kind of guy in the first place.”
He also struggled to reacclimate to the outside world. “I had to relearn how to interact with different kinds of people other than the jailhouse life,” Caine said. “I had to learn how to interact with women. I had to learn how to deal with those in my family. … I’m still learning.”
Caine said he also never learned how to file taxes or be “a responsible adult” or business owner, which got him into trouble after he opened a restaurant and was subsequently audited by the IRS.
After years of struggles, which included a short stint in Cook County jail for a DUI, Eric Caine died of a heart attack in July of last year. He was 58 years old.
Police torture reparations
Clements says that everyone who spends any significant amount of time in prison needs gainful employment and access to mental health and other services upon reentry. That’s something he credits with his own success.
“If you don’t have a way to provide services, people who come out of prison [are] not going to survive regardless of how much money you give them,” he said.
He was part of a movement that pushed Chicago to pass the historic Reparations for Burge Torture Victims Ordinance in 2015. It required, among other things, that then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel formally apologize for the years that city officials looked the other way while Burge and his detectives tortured suspects. It established a fund to pay reparations to survivors of torture under Burge who might not have been eligible for or participating in any civil suits. And it created the Chicago Torture Justice Center, which provides counseling and reentry services, as well as a place for people affected by police violence to gather.
CTJC offers conventional therapies but also something former clinical director Dr. Nate Gillham calls “politicized healing.” They help people develop an understanding of the root causes of their suffering, meaning systemic racism, disinvestment and structures that maintain inequity in communities of color.
“Part of helping people heal is to help give them insight into why these things happen,” he said, adding that the next step is understanding what they can do “to deconstruct those same systems of harm for the next generation.” He said that can take many forms, such as activism, organizing, helping others get on their feet or speaking to classes or on panels about their experiences.
Clements has found purpose as a community organizer at the CTJC. He’s also one of the 57 men who received reparations totaling $100,000 each as part of the reparations ordinance.
“One hundred thousand dollars was a start, but also an insult,” he said. “I always tell people that I thank God that I had a job, because if I did not have a job, reparations to me would’ve been maybe a 90-day treat.”
Clements continues to advocate for an expanded reparations package that would include a wider array of supports. “Reparations, to me, look like jobs, look like health care and housing,” he said. “The other, I hate to say, the system could have kept.”
Aislinn Pulley is the director of the CTJC. She says that in a capitalist society, the settlements, judgments and reparations payments are how we express what is valuable and acknowledge harms. But, she added, they also “reflect the limit of our current structure, the limit of what is available as semblances of justice.”
The payouts are a start, she said, but they are not and should never be considered a substitute for tackling the real issues that money isn’t able to or designed to address.
Today, James Gibson is at the beginning of his compensation story. During his yearslong civil rights lawsuit against the city, he wanted more than anything to hold those complicit in his wrongful conviction to account. He wanted former Mayor Richard M. Daley in particular to be forced to testify. To this day, the only person who has served time for his role in the decades of abuse under Burge’s watch was Burge himself, who served three and a half years for perjury and obstruction of justice.
After about five years of what he called “frivolous motions” and “red tape,” Gibson says he thought the city might try to let the case linger until he was no longer around to pursue it. He decided to settle out of court.
As of this writing, Gibson hasn’t begun to receive settlement payments. But he expects that after attorney fees and other expenses, he’ll receive about 60% of the full award, or close to $9 million.
Still, he says, he’s not celebrating.
“How do you get justice when they took everything?” he told WBEZ. “There is no justice.”
Jessica Pupovac is a Chicago-based reporter, producer and editor.