When victims of police torture are denied a legal remedy and their torturer is paid a pension at their expense as taxpayers - that's the ugly, but true face of access to justice in the U.S.

The highest court of the state of Illinois decided that the former cop who has brutally tortured suspects to get confessions out of them, can keep his state-paid pension of $4,000.00 a month.

At that same time, court-created statutes of limitations, even for constitutional violations, which abound here, prevent victims of the torture from obtaining any compensation.

This case, of all cases, shows why there should not be statutes of limitations on torture and statutes of limitations for victims of torture to sue their torturers. 

Let me ask you - why the German Nazi criminals are tracked down and put through trials for their crimes, without any statutes of limitations, while a torturer like this walks free, and his victims are denied compensation? 

There is no statute of limitations written into the federal Civil Rights Act, it is a judicial creation to prevent the court dockets from being overwhelmed with civil rights claims. 

Yet, victims of torture must have a remedy at all times, especially because they were prevented from suing their torturers by the same government which is now paying pension to Mr. Burge. Let's not pretend naivete by saying that they could sue within the 3-year judicially-established statute of limitations even when they were behind bars. 

Federal courts claiming that everybody is equal under the law treat prisoners and their lawsuits like garbage. 

Moreover, filing a lawsuit against a police officer while you are still in prison can invite more brutality against you, now by corrections officers who will beat you up outside of reach of video cameras and then use your own bruises against you claiming that it was you who assaulted police officers and not vice versa. 

People only end up injured, possibly dead, or at the very least in a solitary confinement for a very long time or with more falsified charges, now for assault of police officers, if you try to sue public officials from within prisons. 

With just 5% of the world's population, the U.S. has 25% of prison population, and the prison population only keeps growing, thus only aggravating the problem with access to justice.

Corrections officers' brutality in American prisons is rampant and not even nearly addressed the way it should be. 

Instead of addressing the issue of torture, both before and after conviction, the U.S. Government enacted long ago the so-called "Prisoners Litigation Reform Act", introducing a pre-condition that a prisoner must first exhaust administrative remedies in the prison before being able to sue for brutality or other unconstitutional prison conditions in federal court.  The "statute of limitations" imposed by that condition precedent is a whopping 15 DAYS!!!

In other words, if a prisoner does not officially complain about police brutality within 15 days of the occurrence - while the prisoner is still within the prison and his health and life is in the hands of the very same people who he is complaining about - the prisoner will not be allowed by federal courts and the U.S. Congress to address the issue of torture at all. 

That is "the law" in the U.S.

And that law and the law that was just created by allowing the torturer to keep his taxpayer-backed pension while his victims cannot obtain any compensation from him directly or from the state who hired and empowered him should be taken off the books as a shame of this nation.

Let's put it this way - Mr. Burge is now the face of the level of access to justice in the U.S. 

The ugly face, but the true face.