Marcel Brown, a 34-year-old, falsely accused of murder in the United States has been awarded $50m in damages after being wrongfully convicted of murder in the largest pay out in US history.
Brown was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted of being an accomplice in the 2008 shooting of a 19-year-old man on the west side of Chicago, Al Jazeera reported.
Read also: Court grants bail to 10 #EndBadGovernance protesters
Brown served 10 years in prison before being released in 2018 after a court vacated his conviction and prosecutors dismissed all charges against him.
After a two-week trial, a jury at the US District Court in Chicago on Monday awarded Brown the damages after finding that police had fabricated evidence and coerced his false confession.
Law firm Loevy & Loevy said police officers had locked Brown in an interrogation room for more than 30 hours, deprived him of food, denied his repeated requests for a phone call, and prevented him from sleeping.
Read also: Police arrest 35,496 suspects, secure 16,200 convictions in one year
Police also threatened him with lengthy imprisonment if he refused to confess and turned away his mother and a lawyer when they arrived to help him, Loevy & Loevy said.
“I was just a kid. They put me in a den full of lions, and they didn’t care or show remorse,” Brown said in a statement released through his lawyers.
Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
Open In Whatsapp
