into confessing by Burge and his officers and had been wrongfully convicted. Daley, at the time the Cook County State's Attorney, has been accused by the Illinois General Assembly of failing to act on information he possessed on the conduct of Burge and others. Daley acknowledged his responsibility to be proactive in stopping torture, but denies any knowledge which could have made him responsible. On July 19, 2006, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. issued a press release calling Mayor Daley culpable, possibly even criminally culpable, for his failure to prosecute until the statute of limitations had run out. Jackson called for an investigation to determine if there was any planned delay in order to allow the cases to expire. Death penalty opponents requested that U.S. President Bill Clinton follow Ryan's lead in halting executions. In August 2000, the Illinois Supreme Court reversed or remanded two Burge-related death row cases based on allegations of torture by police. Civil suits by pardoned men After being pardoned by Governor Ryan, Burge's accusers from death row began to file lawsuits against the city and its officers. Madison Hobley was the first of the four pardoned inmates to file suit in May 2003. Aaron Patterson followed in June with a lawsuit, and Stanley Howard filed suit in November 2003. LeRoy Orange also filed suit. The four men filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against the City of Chicago, Burge, several of Burge's former subordinate police detectives, Cook County, and a few current and former State's Attorneys and assistant state's attorneys of Cook County (the precise list of police officers and prosecutors varied somewhat from plaintiff to plaintiff). Although each case was randomly assigned to a different district judge, the parties all consented to have the four cases consolidated for discovery management before Magistrate Judge Geraldine Soat Brown. In December 2007, a settlement of $19.8 million was reached between the plaintiffs and the so-called "city defendants," consisting of the City of Chicago, Burge, the other former detectives, and Richard M. Daley (former Cook County State's Attorney and Mayor of Chicago at the time of the settlement). Special investigations The Chicago Police Department had conducted an investigation of Burge through its Office of Professional Standards (OPS). Known as the Goldston Report (September 28, 1990) for its lead investigator, this internal report determined that "the preponderance of evidence is that abuse