By Steve Schmadeke
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO, Ill. — A correctional officer at the Cook County Jail who ordered and then took part in the beating of a mentally ill inmate was convicted Thursday after another guard testified against her.
Pamela Bruce shook her head and clenched her jaw as co-defendant Delphia Sawyer tearfully admitted on the stand that both of them had directed two inmates to attack the inmate inside his cell.
“This is what happens when you (expletive) with us,” Sawyer said she told other inmates on the psychiatric tier in the maximum-security Division 10 after the beating of Kyle Pillischafske, 18.
Sawyer had pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of official misconduct in return for prosecutors recommending she be sentenced to probation. Bruce faces probation up to five years in prison after Judge James Linn convicted her of multiple counts of official misconduct, perjury, battery and obstruction of justice after a two-day bench trial.
“This was just a terrible lapse in judgment,” Linn said. “They lost their temper, and things got out of control.”
Sawyer and Bruce were working the 3 to 11 p.m. shift in February 2012 when inmates tried to light a makeshift cigarette made with orange peels and toilet paper but instead cut out power to part of the tier.
The two officers moved those thought to be responsible into their cells, but Pillischafske was slow going back and called Sawyer a “bitch,” according to testimony. Sawyer testified that she then saw Bruce unlock Pillischafske’s cell after the officers saw him with a bedsheet around his neck.
“‘You want to hurt yourself — I got something for you,’” Sawyer quoted Bruce as saying.
Two inmates then entered the cell and repeatedly punched Pillischafske, who was awaiting trial on an aggravated battery charge. Sawyer testified she joined in, kicking the teen in the side. She said she saw Bruce hit him with her police radio.
To cover up the attack, the two wrote false reports, lied to supervisors and a grand jury, and instructed Pillischafske to say he injured himself in a suicide attempt, prosecutors said.
“I did it because I was afraid. … I knew it was wrong and I was scared,” a crying Sawyer testified. “I wanted to cover it up because I didn’t want to be in trouble.”
“This is not a momentary lapse in judgment. This was a cover-up from the beginning,” Assistant State’s Attorney Ankur Srivastava said in his closing arguments. “She thought that she could get away with it because of who she was, and that’s a disgrace to her uniform.”
The story eventually unraveled. A physician at the jail hospital determined that Pillischafske’s injuries were not self-inflicted. A prosecutor testified that investigators interviewed all but one of the 47 men on the tier at the time of the attack — and about half said the two guards had directed the beating.
In his closing argument Thursday, Bruce’s attorney, Frank Edwards, urged the judge not to rely on the word of “dangerous mentally ill criminals,” including a convicted murderer and a child sex offender. And he blasted Sawyer’s reliability.
“She’s doing it for her own self-interest,” Edwards said. “She’s out here throwing her friend under the bus.”
After the trial, Edwards said that “it broke (Bruce’s) heart” when her friend testified against the married mother of two. He said his client decided not to testify herself after learning prosecutors could charge her with additional perjury counts.
Pillischafske, now 21, was jailed at the time of the beating on a charge he intentionally caused a car crash in a botched suicide attempt, injuring a woman in the other car. He pleaded guilty a few weeks later to aggravated battery and was sentenced to probation, court records show.
He sued the officers, the county and Sheriff Tom Dart in federal court in 2012. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount, court records show.