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Shawn Whirl was exonerated in 2015 after serving 25 years in prison. View Full Caption

Shawn Whirl

DOWNTOWN The city should pay $4 million to a man wrongfully convicted of killing a cab driver after being tortured by Chicago Police, a City Council committee unanimously recommended Tuesday.

In 1991, 20-year-old Shawn Whirl was sentenced to 60 years in prison after confessing to the murder of a taxi driver in Pullman. But he recanted his confession and said he had been tortured by Detective James Pienta who had once worked under disgraced police Cmdr. Jon Burge.

Whirl was released in October 2015 after the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission, designed to investigate abuse allegations against Burge and detectives under his supervision, found that his account was "strikingly similar" to those of other Burge victims in 2012.

Whirl said that while he was being questioned about the murder of Billy G. Williams, a married father of three who was found shot in his head, the detective slapped him and repeatedly dug a key into an existing leg wound and put a large potato chip bag over his head to stifle his screams while he was handcuffed to a wall.

After Whirl's conviction was overturned and his confession tossed out by an appellate court judge, Cook County prosecutors declined to retry him.

Pineta, who is no longer a Chicago Police officer, has been accused of torture by other people.

Called to testify at a hearing in Whirl's case, Pineta asserted his Fifth Amendment right and refused to answer questions.

From 1972 to 1991, Burge and his subordinates allegedly used cattle prods, suffocation, Russian roulette and beatings with phone books to elicit confessions from suspects, many of them African-Americans.

In May 2015, Mayor Rahm Emanuel apologized for the officers' actions and created a $5.5 million reparations fund for victims.

The fund will allow a maximum of $100,000 to be paid to each of the more than 100 Burge torture victims, while the ordinance also allows the victims and their families health care, counseling and free tuition at the City Colleges. It also calls for the subject of police torture to be taught to Chicago Public Schools students in junior high and high school.

In December, the City Council agreed to settle three police misconduct lawsuits for $5.5 million.

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Man Tortured By Police Should Get $4 Million From City, Aldermen Recommend - DNAinfo