Former Chicago Ald. Ed Burke, the longest-serving alderman in city history, has officially reported to a federal prison to begin serving a prison sentence after being convicted in a corruption trial.
Burke, 80, reported for the start of his two year sentence at a federal minimum security camp in Thomson, Illinois, according to prison officials.
Originally it was believed that Burke would serve his sentence at the minimum security camp at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana, but those plans changed before he reported.
In June, Burke was sentenced to two years in prison and a $2 million fine after he was convicted of illegally using his power to win private law business from developers to threatening one of Chicago’s cultural icons for his own benefit. The court set the financial value of the crimes was set at $215,000, which came with a federal recommended sentence of 78-to-97 months.
Federal prosecutors, in a 51-page court filing, pushed for a 10-year prison sentence, which would have amounted to one of the harshest public corruption sentences handed down in the city’s federal court in the last decade.
“He abused and exploited his office by pursuing his own personal and financial interests over a course of years,” prosecutors wrote in the memo. “Again and again, Burke used his significant political power to solicit and receive bribes from entities with business before the City of Chicago — all so he could obtain legal business for his private law firm.”
Meanwhile, Burke’s lawyers asked a judge to give him no prison time, which they say would “be a powerful and just expression of mercy for an 80-year-old man in the twilight of his life who has given so much of himself to so many and for so many years.”