$15.4 million settlement proposed for man who spent 33 years in prison for wrongful double murder conviction
City attorneys are recommending that the Chicago City Council agree to pay a nearly $15.4 million settlement to a man who spent 33 years in prison for a 1987 double murder he did not commit.
The City Council Finance Committee on Thursday is set to vote on the recommended settlement with 77-year-old Robert Smith, who was convicted in 1990 of the murders of his mother-in-law, Edith Yeager, and her mother, Willie Bell Alexander. Their throats were slashed with a butcher knife before their home was set ablaze.
Smith has maintained all along that several Chicago police detectives trained by disgraced former commander Jon Burge beat him into a false confession to the crime during a 19-hour interrogation in 1987.
The lawsuit filed by Smith's attorneys claims detectives repeatedly punched, kicked, and beat Jones with both a telephone book and a club during his intterrogation; called him racial slurs; and stuffed his wallet and handkerchief in his mouth, causing him to choke until he almost passed out before forcing him to sign a false confession.
Smith's attorneys have said no physical evidence ever linked him to the murders, and that he only agreed to confess after detectives promised to get him medical attention.
The lawsuit claims detectives fabricated evidence against Smith by taking a pair of his underwear, dipping it in blood, and planting it at the crime scene.
Smith was released from prison in 2020 after special prosecutors assigned to look into torture allegations against Burge and other detectives agreed to toss out Smith's conviction and life sentence. Smith was later granted a certificate of innocence fully clearing him of all charges.
Despite that, court records show the city continued to defend the detectives in Smith's case in court for years before beginning settlement negotiations in 2024 before reaching a tentative settlement agreement this summer.
If the settlement with Smith is approved by the Finance Committee on Thursday, the full City Council could vote on the agreement on Dec. 10.
More than 100 people – almost all of them Black men – have accused Burge and detectives who worked under him of torturing them into false confessions.
Burge, who was a detective in Area 2 on the South Side in the 1970s, and was commander of the Area 2 Violent Crimes Unit in the early 1980s, was fired from the Police Department in 1993, after a police review board ruled he had tortured suspect Andrew Wilson, who said Burge shocked him on his genitals and back.
While more than 100 people eventually accused Burge and officers under his command of using electric shocks, suffocations, and beatings in order to coerce them into providing false confessions, Burge was never charged with torture.
However, in 2010, he was convicted of lying about torture in testimony he provided for a civil case. Burge was convicted of perjury and obstruction of for lying in a civil suit when he denied committing or witnessing torture.
Burge served a 4 ½ year prison sentence for that conviction, and was released in 2015. In 2018, he died at the age of 70.