CHICAGO—In this city’s history of police misconduct, Eric Caine’s case may be unrivaled: It took more than 25 years and $10 million to resolve.
For decades, he maintained he didn’t brutally kill an elderly couple. The police, he said, beat him into a false confession. Locked up at age 20, he was freed at 46, bewildered by a world he no longer recognized. Caine ultimately was declared innocent, sued the city and settled for $10 million. But victory brought him little peace.
“They wouldn’t give anybody that large amount of money if they didn’t believe that person was wronged,” he says. “But I also look at it as a way for them to just want me to go away. ... Nobody cares if I live or die.”
Caine is just one example of huge police settlements that have tarnished the city in recent years. Among them: A one-time death row inmate beaten by police: $6.1 million. An unarmed man fatally shot by an officer: $4.1 million.
And last year, the family of Laquan McDonald, the black teenager shot 16 times by a white officer, received $5 million. His death, captured in a video, led to a murder charge against the officer, the police chief’s firing and street protests with calls for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s resignation.
