County commissioners approved roughly $48 million in legal settlements on Thursday, including $7.45 million each to two men who won a record jury verdict after wrongfully spending 16 years behind bars.
John Fulton and Anthony Mitchell sued the Chicago Police Department and the county in 2020 alleging they were railroaded as teenagers and falsely confessed in 2003 to the murder and burning of Christopher Collazo. The two men won a record $60 million each in damages from a jury this March after successfully arguing they were the victims of a bogus murder investigation by police and Cook County prosecutors.
The teenagers were convicted and sentenced to 31 years in prison for the murder. Attorney Jon Loevy told reporters after the jury verdict that Fulton, then 18, spent more than 100 hours being interrogated and Mitchell, then 17, spent more than 40 hours under interrogation. He said both were coerced into false confessions that evidence didn’t support…