Afternoon Briefing: Cook County to pay $15 million in civil rights settlement
County commissioners approved roughly $48 million in legal settlements today, including $7.45 million each to two men who won a record jury verdict after wrongfully spending 16 years behind bars.
John Fulton and Anthony Mitchell sued the Chicago Police Department and the county in 2020 alleging they were railroaded as teenagers and falsely confessed in 2003 to the murder and burning of Christopher Collazo. The two men won a record $60 million each in damages from a jury this March after successfully arguing they were the victims of a bogus murder investigation by police and Cook County prosecutors.
Here's what else is happening today. And remember, for the latest breaking news in Chicago, visit chicagotribune.com/latest-headlines and sign up to get our alerts on all your devices.
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When Robert Francis Prevost spoke in Spanish to his crowd of supporters for the first time in St. Peter's Square last week, Edgewater resident Julio Fernandez said it made him tear up. 'I've lived in Chicago for many years. And that he is from both places makes me double proud,' Fernandez, 74, a retired doctor from northern Peru, said. Read more here.
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The Chicago developer that was negotiating to buy the northern swath of the stalled Lincoln Yards megadevelopment site is now in talks to purchase the entire 53-acre tract, according to sources familiar with the deal. Read more here.
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A soft part in the Cubs' schedule continues this weekend as they face off against the White Sox, who own the worst record in the American League. Read more here.
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Andrew and Kelsey McClellan are sign painters and gold-leafing artists, practitioners of venerable art forms that were once so prominent here that the city was, without argument, the center of the sign-painting world but, after new machine technologies were introduced, all but extinct by the 1980s. Read more here.
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Before becoming Pope Leo XIV, Cardinal Robert Prevost presided over one of the most revolutionary reforms of Pope Francis' pontificate by having women serve on the Vatican board that vets nominations for bishops. But he also has said decisively that women cannot be ordained as priests. Read more here.
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