US Man Awarded $50M After Wrongful Conviction for Chicago Murder

Marcel Brown, 34, was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted as an accomplice in the 2008 shooting of a 19-year-old man in Chicago

Marcel Brown, a man wrongfully convicted of murder, has been awarded $50 million in damages in what is believed to be the largest payout of its kind in U.S. history. Brown, now 34, was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted as an accomplice in the 2008 shooting of a 19-year-old man on Chicago’s west side.

After serving 10 years behind bars, Brown was released in 2018 when his conviction was vacated, and all charges against him were dropped. On Monday, a jury at the U.S. District Court in Chicago awarded the damages, finding that police officers had fabricated evidence and coerced Brown into providing a false confession.

According to Brown’s legal team from Loevy & Loevy, police had held him in an interrogation room for more than 30 hours without food or sleep, denied him a phone call, and threatened him with a long prison sentence if he refused to confess. Additionally, officers reportedly turned away Brown’s mother and lawyer when they arrived to assist him during the interrogation.

“I was just a kid,” Brown said in a statement released by his attorneys. “They put me in a den full of lions, and they didn’t care or show remorse.”

The jury’s decision came after a two-week trial, highlighting a case that has raised further concerns about police misconduct and wrongful convictions in the U.S.