A man in the United States has been awarded $50 million in damages, marking the largest wrongful conviction payout in the country’s history.
Marcel Brown, 34, was sentenced to 35 years in prison for allegedly being an accomplice in the 2008 shooting of a 19-year-old on Chicago’s west side.
Brown served 10 years before being released in 2018 when his conviction was vacated, and prosecutors dropped all charges.
After a two-week trial, a jury in the US District Court in Chicago ruled on Monday that police had fabricated evidence and coerced a false confession from Brown, leading to the damages award.
According to his legal team at Loevy & Loevy, police officers held Brown in an interrogation room for over 30 hours, depriving him of food, and sleep, and denying his requests for a phone call. They also threatened him with a long prison sentence if he refused to confess and blocked his mother and lawyer from assisting him.
“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 through his attorneys.
