Chicago's longest-serving City Council member Ed Burke is in prison
Edward M. Burke, the onetime dean of the Chicago City Council and its longest-serving member, has surrendered to a federal prison to begin serving his two-year sentence for racketeering, bribery and attempted extortion, authorities have confirmed.
Burke is in custody at a low-security facility in Thomson, Illinois, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
It’s a day many Chicagoans thought would never come. Even after his conviction by a jury last December, some predicted the 80-year-old political powerhouse would delay any sentence by tying his case up with appeals. No such appeal ever materialized.
Inmates at the Thomson facility are responsible for making their beds, sweeping and mopping their living-area floors, removing trash and "ensuring it is clean and sanitary," according to its official handbook. Inmates must wear "institution issued clothing" from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays that includes a white t-shirt, spruce green shirt and slacks.
The handbook also says leisure programs are provided. Burke, who is Roman Catholic, may also be able to take advantage of the facility's Religious Services Department, which "provides pastoral care and religious accommodation."
Though U.S. District Chief Judge Virginia Kendall recommended Burke serve his time at a facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, that recommendation was not binding on the Bureau of Prisons.
Burke’s two-year sentence is a fraction of what prosecutors sought when it came time for Kendall to decide Burke’s fate this summer. Several defendants have landed harsher sentences as a result of public corruption convictions in recent years.
Even the developer convicted alongside Burke in December, Charles Cui, is due to surrender Jan. 10 to serve a sentence that exceeds Burke’s by eight months.
Kendall has said she based Burke’s sentence not just on his crimes, but on hundreds of letters documenting good, altruistic works by him over the years. She also questioned the wisdom of a deal prosecutors struck with Burke’s former colleague, Danny Solis.
Solis spent more than 20 years representing Chicago’s 25th Ward on the City Council. But in 2016, the FBI confronted him with evidence of his own wrongdoing. Solis quickly agreed to cooperate with the FBI and record powerful politicians like Burke and former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, who will soon face his own corruption trial at Chicago's federal courthouse.
If Solis keeps up his end of a bargain with federal prosecutors — including by testifying this fall against Madigan — Solis will likely never be convicted of a crime. He will never have to surrender to a federal prison facility, as Burke has now done.
A jury convicted Burke in December of 13 counts of racketeering, bribery and attempted extortion. The case against him involved schemes centering on the Field Museum, the Old Post Office straddling the Eisenhower Expressway, a Burger King in Burke’s ward and a Binny’s Beverage Depot on the Northwest Side.
The FBI raided Burke’s offices in November 2018. The event first revealed to the public the existence of what turned out to be a sprawling federal investigation of state and city politics. It upended the race for mayor at the time, which ended with the election of Lori Lightfoot.
Burke didn’t leave the City Council until May 2023, six months before his trial began.
Madigan, who left the Legislature in 2021 and was indicted in 2022, faces trial Oct. 8.