Chicago to pay $31M to 4 wrongly convicted for rape, murder

CHICAGO – The city of Chicago has agreed to pay $31 million to four men imprisoned for 15 years for a rape and murder they didn’t commit.

The sum to settle their police-misconduct lawsuits appeared Friday in agenda notes of the City Council’s finance committee. It will discuss the settlement Monday.

Michael Saunders, Vincent Thames, Harold Richardson and Terrill Swift were freed after 2011 tests matched DNA from the victim’s body to another man killed in 2008.

An FBI report unsealed this year accused investigators of pressuring the then-teenagers during the investigation of the 1994 rape and killing of 30-year-old Nina Glover. It cited an ex-prosecutor describing how investigators coached witnesses and manipulated the defendants into giving false confessions.

The City Council nearly always OKs police-misconduct settlements brought to it for approval.