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Even though Cook County prosecutors dropped all charges against Darrell Cannon in a 1983 murder, the Illinois Prisoner Review Board said Thursday it believed he had a role in the slaying and decided he should remain in prison indefinitely. Board Chairman Jorge Montes said he was "inclined to believe" Cannon's claim that detectives working under former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge extracted a confession from Cannon through torture. But the board, said Montes, did not accept Cannon's claim that he was only an unwitting bystander to the gang-related slaying. The ruling capped an unusual parole revocation hearing at which Burge and four detectives he once supervised invoked their 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination, refusing to answer questions about how they obtained a murder confession from Cannon. Cannon, 53, alleges the detectives under Burge took him to remote locations where they shocked his genitals with a cattle prod, put a shotgun he thought was loaded in his mouth and repeatedly pulled the trigger and taunted him with racial epithets. In January 1991, just before a trial judge was scheduled to hear testimony about the torture, Cook County prosecutors agreed to a plea deal with Cannon. He pleaded guilty and dropped the torture allegations in exchange for a scheduled August 2003 release date. Before he was released, the Prisoner Review Board served Cannon with a parole revocation notice issued after he was convicted in the 1983 slaying. As a result, Cannon remained in Tamms Correctional Center, the state's highest security prison. [more

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