(FinalCall.com)�After years of charges that a Chicago cop tortured confessions out of innocent people, all of them Black, a Cook County Court judge in Chicago appointed a special prosecutor to review the more than 60 cases and determine if, in fact, criminal charges are warranted against a feared and notorious police lieutenant.

It�s about time that there is a real possibility that more than the innocently jailed will be the only ones who suffer from the alleged abuses.

Police Lt. Jon Burge is accused of the kind of torture that would put him in the company of the New York cop convicted of brutalizing Abner Louima. In Burge�s "House of Screams," as the rooms where he allegedly forced the confessions are called, the torturous acts include Russian Roulette, cigarette burns, putting electrical wires to genitals and other body parts and running shocks through the victims, suffocation with plastic bags, cattle prods, and other heinous methods.

Among his alleged victims are 10 men currently on Death Row. Each of them claim their confession was coerced by Burge through torture. The "Death Row 10" include: Aaron Patterson, Reginald Mahaffey, Jerry Mahaffey, Stanley Howard, Leroy Orange, Leonard Kidd, Andrew Maxwell, Madison Hobley, Frank Bounds and Ronald Kitchen.

In the case of Leroy Orange, for example, the inmate claims Burge and other officers pulled his pants down and electroshocked his testicles and buttocks, stuck needles in his buttocks and suffocated him with a plastic bag.

Aaron Patterson claims he was threatened with a gun, beaten, kicked, and suffocated twice with a typewriter cover during 25 hours of interrogation.

The so-called "House of Screams" began in 1973 and lasted until 1993 when Burge was fired after Death Row inmate Andrew Wilson won a $1.1 million civil suit against the police department. A police board found that indeed Wilson was abused while in Burge�s custody. Wilson claimed he was electro- shocked and handcuffed to a hot radiator.

In 1990, the department�s Office of Professional Standards issued the Goldston Report that found "systematic" abuses and that police "torture � is an expression of institutional racism."

Judge Paul P. Biebel Jr., in appointing special prosecutor Edward J. Egan, a former Illinois Apellate Court judge, and Robert D. Boyle, a former Cook County state�s attorney�s criminal division chief, as his assistant, has taken the right step in bringing justice to this travesty.

Anti-death penalty activists are pleased with the appointment and hope that a thorough investigation into the charges and the evidence already uncovered will yield a just resolution. In any case, taxpayers who already have been tapped for millions of dollars for police brutality lawsuits in the city, better prepare their wallets for the avalanche of suits that will be won against past abuses�especially if the charges against Burge are sustained.

Meanwhile, let�s hope that the arms of the law are long enough to reach into Florida, where Burge, though fired, currently enjoys retirement with pension.