There are two opinions about what happened in the police Area Four interrogation room on Jan. 7, 1990, the night Angelo Rogers confessed to murder.
Police say Rogers was treated with respect while in custody and, under skillful questioning, signed a statement admitting that he argued with his roommate, Norman Scaggs, then stabbed and killed him.
But Rogers, a 19-year-old fast-food cook, tells a different story, one of a police detective who kept him awake and unfed overnight, shoved him around and threatened him. Finally, Rogers says, frightened and confused, he confessed to a crime he did not commit.
The man who questioned Rogers that night was Detective Kriston Kato, 41, a solidly built, 6-foot-tall veteran who has received two department commendations and more than 60 honorable mentions in his 15 years on the force. Kato is valued in the department as a detective who tracks and arrests the most brutal and deceptive killers in police Area Four on the West Side.
”He is one of the best detectives I`ve ever seen,” said Area Four Cmdr. James Maurer. ”I thank God every day that there are policemen on this job like Kris Kato.”
But to others, Kato is the Police Department`s shame, a cop who obtains confessions through intimidation and, sometimes, beatings. As his arrest record mounts, so do complaints. Since 1988, 25 criminal suspects have testified in court or to the police office of professional standards that Kato beat or threatened them during questioning, records show.
”Detective Kato, for some reason known only to himself, uses physical abuse in order to obtain statements and close his cases,” assistant public defender Anthony B. Eben, Jr. told a judge during a March hearing.
”He does whatever he has to do to get statements from these people. That is the way it works, and it`s time to stop.”
Kato, who declined to comment for this article, has denied in court that he mistreated any suspect.
The Police Department`s internal investigators have ruled that the complaints against Kato could not be proved.
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Kato`s record poses a classic conflict of law enforcement. Police and criminal suspects often give radically different accounts of those moments when a crime is confessed, forcing judges and juries to decide whether justice was served behind the closed door of the police interrogation room.
In many cases, the challenge is to draw the line between tough questioning and brutality. Buffetted on one side by new revelations of police brutality and on the other by reports of runaway urban violence, courts are often left to decide whether a defendant`s will was overruled when he confessed.
And now, due to a new court ruling, some criminal justice experts say that the controversy over coerced confessions has heightened. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed its long-held position that a coerced confession is grounds to overturn a conviction even if the confession was true. The use by police of physical or psychological pressure violates a defendant`s civil rights, the court held, but is ”harmless error” if other factors seal his guilt.
”The ruling will give new life to the issue of coerced confessions,”
said William Geller, associate director of the Police Executive Research Forum, who studies issues relating to police use of force.
Geller added that as public outcry about crime increases, so too will the pressure on police, and society, to decide where to set limits.
”Officers are told to stay within the law, but they often feel the message really is get results at any cost,” said Geller. ”There is a lot of frustration built up. We may be forcing the police to cut corners on the Constitution.”
Chicago defense attorney Steven R. Decker said that in cases of contested confessions, juries sometimes side with police even if they think force was used.
”They tend to think, `The officer beat him, but so what?` ” he said.
” `He beat the truth out of him.` ”
In some cities, police and prosecutors have all but eliminated accusations of coerced confessions by videotaping defendants` statements.
”We don`t have any coerced confession claims anymore,” says Sean Walsh, a bureau chief with the Bronx, N.Y., district attorney`s office, which videotapes confessions in major felony cases. ”When a jury sees a guy sitting back eating a sandwich or blowing a cigarette and he says he`s been treated well during questioning, they tend to believe it.”
At the Orange County, Cal., sheriff`s office, Lt. Dick Olson said videotaping suspects` interrogations in homicide cases has cut down on the cost of litigation over allegations of coerced confessions.
”When you have the demeanor of the suspect on tape, there is no room for someone to say he was bullied,” he said.
In 1988, the most recent year for which complete records were available, the Chicago paid $158,445 to settle the lawsuits of 14 residents who said they were beaten while being held and questioned at police station houses. None of the suits involved Kato.
The Chicago Police Department does not videotape confessions or interrogations. Cmdr. Maurer said his office is close enough to interrogation rooms that he can monitor what goes on inside without videotaping.
”If anyone thinks that I would allow my officers to put their careers, their families and their livelihoods on the line just to get a confession from some chump, they`re nuts,” Maurer says. ”I`m not going to blow this job or take a chance on going to a federal penitentiary just to get a confession out of some meathead who`s only going to get about five years even if he said he did it. It does not go on, with Kris Kato or anybody. It just doesn`t happen anymore. This is not 35 or 40 years ago.”
The controversy over Kato was fueled in January when a jury acquitted Angelo Rogers of murder charges. According to Rogers` attorney, Assistant Public Defender Kathleen Pantle, ”The long and the short of it was his statement didn`t match the facts.”
Though Rogers` roommate was killed with a blunt object, Pantle said, Rogers` confession to Kato was that he stabbed the man three times in the chest with a knife. A day after the interrogation, a photograph of Rogers`
wrists showed abrasions where handcuffs had been.
”I think the jury believed it was unusual that all these other detectives would speak to Angelo and he was consistent with them, and then when Kato took the case, all of a sudden Angelo confessed,” Pantle said.
Other attorneys express similar concern.
”With other detectives, the allegation of a beating will happen one time or two, but with Kato it`s over and over,” said Assistant Public Defender Karen G. Shields. ”And over and over there is no physical evidence that puts the defendant with the case. There is nothing else besides the confession.”
”Kato is the worst-kept secret in Cook County,” says criminal defense lawyer Edward G. Stern. ”I know of nobody else who has this many beefs of late. With Kato, the number of complaints is exponentially different.”
Maurer called the accusations ”total nonsense.” But he said a judge recently told him, ”It`s gotten so when a policeman gets on the witness stand, the first thing the defense attorney asks him is, `Have you worked with Kris Kato?` ”
The accusations that Kato coerced confessions, outlined in court records and police disciplinary files, show the evidentiary problems and moral quandaries that confront judges and juries.
Of the 25 criminal suspects who say Kato beat or threatened them during questioning, four have been found guilty of the crimes to which they confessed. One besides Rogers has been acquitted. Two did not make statements and were never charged. The other 17 await trial.
In some cases, defendants` assertions of being beaten are unsupported by records or contradicted. John Braboy, 26, said Kato broke his finger during an interrogation session that ended in Braboy confessing to robbery and shooting. Medical records show Braboy waited eight days before getting an X-ray of the finger, and the X-ray was inconclusive.
But in a handful of cases, court records and police and medical documents raise questions about whether injuries were incurred during police custody, or show that the suspects` confessions do not match the facts of the crimes.
– The city was sued in April by West Side resident Miller Holston, who was acquitted of murder charges despite his confession to Kato. No physical evidence or witnesses linked him to the crime. Holston, who spent 17 months in jail before being acquitted, is asking for $7.4 million.
– In March 1990, six months after the slaying of Jose Vivas, Michael Waslewski, 23, confessed. After being questioned overnight by Kato, Waslewski gave a detailed statement describing how he and a friend, Daniel Gasca, stabbed Vivas to death during a fight over money, then put Vivas` body in the trunk of a car that they left in an alley near Cook County Jail.
But on the night of the killing, Waslewski`s friend, Gasca, was in Cook County Jail on an unrelated charge, court records show.
The day after the interrogation, Waslewski called his mother and told her he was beaten by Kato and another detective. Gasca and Waslewski`s friend Brian Kane were also questioned that night by Kato. Gasca, who was held for 26 hours, said Kato walked into the interrogation room and announced, ”You`re a killer and you have no remorse.” When he denied the crime, Gasca said, Kato hit him on the temple. Kane said Kato pulled his hair until he cried. Neither was charged.
Waslewski was charged with murder. In a pre-trial hearing, seeking to rebut the accusations against Kato, assistant Cook County state`s attorney Timothy Joyce said that Waslewski first told standards office investigators that Kato kicked him in the groin as he was sitting down, then later testified that Kato ”stepped on” his groin.
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”The defendant is making it up, Judge, as he goes along to suit his purposes,” Joyce said.
”All these people want you to believe that the police at Area Four Violent Crimes and in particular Kris Kato were hellbent on clearing these cases,” Joyce said, but they ”have more compelling reasons to lie than almost anyone who`s been in this courtroom.”
– After 15-year-old Harold Lucas Jr. made a murder confession to Kato, his father and godmother saw him at the police station and said he coughed up blood, internal police records show. Lucas said Kato punched him in the stomach, slapped him, and stepped on his genitals while he was sitting down, records show.
After interrogation by Kato, Lucas signed a statement saying that he shot a rival gang member in the head because he wore his hat tilted the wrong way, police records show. Weeks after the slaying, an anonymous caller told police that Lucas was the killer. According to police records, another detective reported that Lucas ”did not fit the description of the killer provided by witnesses.”
Kato was assigned to the case a few days later and on that night he arrested Lucas and obtained a confession. Lucas is awaiting trial.
– The day after murder suspect Tony Bey confessed to Kato and his partner, John Summerville, Bey was admitted to Cermak Hospital, which serves Cook County Jail inmates, with ”numerous lacerations” on his back, hospital records show.
Bey told police investigators that Kato put a pistol in his mouth and threatened to make him ”a statistic.” He said Summerville pulled his sweater over his head, scraped his back with a metal pipe and kneed him in the abdomen.
According to police records, police lockup keeper William Healy said Bey complained of stomach pain immediately after his interrogation, but refused medical treatement.
When he sought treatment at the jail`s hospital, Bey was diagnosed with acute appendicitis, and surgery was performed at Cook County Hospital two days after his interrogation.
Bey, 37, has been convicted twice before of voluntary manslaughter.
”It just doesn`t make sense that someone with his background would break down and confess,” said Julie B. Aimen, Bey`s attorney.
Bey allegedly told Kato he planned a robbery that resulted in the deaths of two men.
Police said that he told them where to find one of the murder weapons, a rock, but Bey`s lawyers say he denies making that statement.
Bey is awaiting trial. Summerville declined to comment on the case.
And Joshua Sachs, one of Bey`s attorneys, acknowledged the difficulty of deciding who is telling the truth in cases that hinge on confessions.
”Whenever there`s a confession, the guy says the cops beat it out of him, and the police say they didn`t,” Sachs said.
With Kato, he added, ”You don`t know if this is a good detective catching a lot of dirty guys or a dirty guy himself.”
Deputy Police Supt. Jack Townsend said, ”Kato has a high percentage of arrests for homicides, and naturally when you`re a good policeman, you`re going to have allegations made against you.”
Said Cmdr. Maurer, ”People in this town, we should pray that we have 500 more guys like Kris Kato.”