A man who spent nearly four decades in prison before he was cleared of the 1982 murders of two Chicago police officers is in line for a $12.7 million settlement from the city.

The City Council Finance Committee on Monday will vote on a recommendation from the city's Law Department to settle Jackie Wilson's lawsuit claiming disgraced former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge and detectives under his command tortured him into a false confession to the killings of officers Richard O'Brien and William Fahey. If approved by the Finance Committee, the full City Council could vote on the settlement on Wednesday.

Wilson has claimed Burge and detectives under his command beat him with a dictionary, stuck a gun in his mouth and played Russian roulette, and gave him electric shocks.

His lawsuit also accused former Mayor Richard M. Daley – who was Cook County State's Attorney at the time – and former Chicago Police Superintendents Terry Hillard and LeRoy Martin of conspiring to cover up Burge's torture. All of them have denied Wilson's claims.

In March 2024, the Cook County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a $17 million settlement for Wilson to resolve his lawsuit against county officials for their role in his wrongful conviction.

A Cook County judge granted Wilson a certificate of innocence in 2020, after he'd been tried three times for the murders, and had spent 36 years in prison before he was released in 2018. That judge determined Wilson's confession had been coerced, and could not be used against him at trial.

Wilson's first conviction was overturned on appeal. At a retrial in 1989, he was acquitted of Fahey's murder but convicted of O'Brien's.

His brother, Andrew, was convicted of killing both officers and died in prison in 2007. Wilson's third trial centered on the question of whether he was legally responsible, even though his brother had been convicted of shooting the officers, as prosecutors argued the two had been plotting to break a friend out of police custody.

Near the end of his third trial, special prosecutors handling the case dropped all charges against Wilson, just after one of the original prosecutors on the case revealed he was a long-time friend of a key witness in the case.

Cook County assistant state's attorney Nicholas Trutenko testified during the defense case that he was a long-time friend of William Coleman, a central witness in Wilson's 1989 trial.

Wilson's defense team has portrayed Coleman as an "international con man who repeatedly perjured himself decades ago to secure Wilson's conviction," but neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys in the case knew whether Coleman was alive or dead.

Trutenko testified he had been in touch with Coleman just days before taking the stand in Wilson's third trial, noting he became godfather to one of Coleman's daughters several years earlier.

Trutenko and fellow assistant state's attorney Andrew Horvat were both later fired and charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for their alleged misconduct in Wilson's case, but earlier this year were acquitted of all charges.

Burge's name has become synonymous with police brutality and the torture of innocent suspects for decades in Chicago. More than 100 suspects – almost all of them black men -- claimed Burge and his officers tortured them into falsely confessing to crimes ranging from armed robbery to murder.

Burge was fired by the police department in 1993, but never faced criminal charges for abuse.

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 was released from prison in 2014 and died four years later at the age of 70.