Edward Burke is going to prison. But the 80-year-old former alderman, arguably the most powerful politician in Chicago for decades, surely won’t be incarcerated for close to the two years he got Monday for getting caught red-handed shaking down businesses needing city permits and approvals.
The sentence handed down by U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall was about one-fifth of the nearly 10 years prosecutors recommended. It also was considerably lighter than the minimum 6.5 years Burke would have gotten had the judge followed the federal sentencing guidelines for the crimes he committed.
The question for us — and for all of Chicago — is, was justice served?
We’ll render our verdict further down, but let’s start by acknowledging that Burke benefited greatly from the judge’s considering five decades of good works by the former alderman while being legally restricted from regarding anything but the two years and four specific criminal entanglements that comprised his actual prosecution.
Prosecutors tried hard to convince the judge that Burke’s sleazy attempts to extort business for his property tax appeals firm long preceded these discrete incidents. “Clearly, these were not a one-time lapse in judgment,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker argued. “They were the exact opposite. … He operated as a seasoned professional.”
Burke’s attorneys jumped up to object, but the judge reassured them immediately that the law didn’t allow her to assume Burke’s shakedown of a Burger King franchise owner in his ward was just the latest in presumably years’ worth of similar actions.
Surely, everyone else in that courtroom knew better. Having spent five decades as an alderman, Burke didn’t amass a $30 million fortune without using his powerful perch to steer business to his firm.
In the end, the righteous anger of federal prosecutors was overwhelmed in Kendall’s courtroom by the other side of Ed Burke — the generous benefactor. Burke attorney Chuck Sklarsky spent most of his time before the judge going through the piles of letters sent on Burke’s behalf by both the powerful and the ordinary, extolling the alderman’s generosity amid countless examples when he performed extraordinary services for his fellow human beings without seeking credit or asking for anything in return.
Kendall expressed amazement. “I have never in all my career seen the letters I’ve seen for Mr. Burke,” she said. She remarked on the distinction between the criminal period at the heart of his conviction and the outpouring of support for the disgraced politician. “I have two years, four instances,” she said of the crimes, “and 50 years of this,” she said of the good works.
In a brief statement before the judge handed down her sentence, Burke said, “I’ve been blessed.” He was speaking about his family and friends. But he could just as easily have been referring to his good fortune in that courtroom. A lifetime of charity and generosity, both personal and financial, divided by two years of criminality added up to what few would argue was a light sentence given Burke’s outsize contribution to Chicago’s sad and deserved reputation as a swamp of corruption.
The $2 million fine was, on one level, a big bill for Burke to have to pay but also very disturbing to us.
As the judge noted, the fine is uncommonly large, but she only levied it because he could easily afford to pay. Thus it left the impression of a powerful man being permitted to purchase years of freedom, simply because he had sufficient resources to do so.
Would a two-bit alderman who’d been convicted of similar corruption but who lacked Burke’s wherewithal to pay a big fine been handed just two years?
Burke expressed regret for the way his career ended. “The blame is mine and mine alone,” he intoned, as if the responsibility should lie anywhere else. That was hardly a sign of contrition or remorse. Only Burke knows what he meant by that, but to our eyes, he appeared simply to be criticizing himself for getting caught.
So, was justice done? We wouldn’t have wished for the judge to give Burke a decadelong prison term, given his age and health. That might well have amounted, as attorney Sklarsky said, to a “death sentence.”
But two years?
The public’s primary interest in Burke’s fate is ensuring it acts as a deterrent to other aldermen and public servants who are tempted to leverage their offices and enrich themselves. Burke’s fall, even before conviction and sentencing, truly has been precipitous given how he was regarded before FBI agents famously papered the walls of his office in November 2018 as they ransacked it for evidence. That alone might dissuade a future criminal in pinstripes.
But the scanty two years behind prison walls (in practice, far less) doesn’t strike us as particularly daunting.
“The blame is mine and mine alone.” If Burke is about taking responsibility for something, here’s what we think the imperious former Finance Committee chairman ought to be sorry for — besmirching the reputation of a city he claims to love.
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