Trial Wrapping Up

So is Ed Burke going to prison for a few years?

• Lawyers for ex-Ald. Edward Burke on Thursday sought to portray the once-mighty Democratic machine politician as an honest broker of city business who respected the guardrails between public and private life but fell victim to an unscrupulous FBI mole out to save himself.

  Yes, there was a scheme, Burke’s attorney Joseph Duffy told jurors in closing arguments at his corruption trial, but Burke was its target, not its mastermind. He never took any official action in exchange for anything of value, Duffy said. In fact, the evidence showed he never got a dime.

  Instead, the case is a product of overzealous government agents and their puppet, alderman-turned-FBI cooperator Daniel Solis, according to Duffy, who noted with indignation that it was the defense side that put Solis on the witness stand, not prosecutors.

Solis is that most despised of politicians - a "rat" who wore a wire to save himself an overly long stint in prison. We aren't fans of aldercreatures, but the only way any corruption is ever rooted out is by rats wearing wires and turncoats testifying against their corrupt colleagues. The trouble is, when one squeals, then their entire family - personal and political - is frozen out of feeding at the public trough for years, decades, even forever, and that's the only way they know to make money. They certainly aren't going into the trades or selling used cars.

But after all of his being a mole, the prosecution never even called Solis to the stand. Burke's lawyers called him as a defense witness of all things. We don't want to say the fix was in, but what the actual Hell?

Long time readers will recall that we've been cops for decades now and are rapidly approaching retirement. We can trace back cops in our family for six decades and counting in-laws, close to a century. We were raised on these stories and we've read many books. 

One of the best is still "Boss" by Mike Royko. Another is "When Corruption Was King" by crooked mob lawyer Robert Cooley about Outfit influence over all sorts of stuff, culminating in the Operation Gambat indictments. But Cooley's closing chapters touched on an as-then-un-indicted aldercreature and his lawyer wife. Guess who?

We've been cheering for Burke to go to prison for a long time now, and now we have actual doubts it might ever happen.