Source: Jeremy Kohm / EyeEm / Getty
On Wednesday a prison inmate who alleged he was tortured by Chicago police into confessing to a murder he did not commit was released from prison after spending a quarter of a century behind bars. Shawn Whirl walked out of Hill Correctional Center a free man shortly after noon, two months after an Illinois appeals court overturned his 1991 murder conviction in the fatal shooting of Chicago cabdriver Billy G. Williams and one day after a Cook County judge dismissed the charges against him.
The 45-year-old Whirl said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press as he was driven away from the prison “It hasn’t quite hit me yet, I didn’t cry when I got out because I think I cried so much trying to fight this wrong, (and) I think I am kind of out of tears right now.” Whirl claimed he was tortured into confessing by a detective who worked under disgraced former Chicago police commander Jon Burge.
Whirl also said he was slapped, stepped on, subjected to racial slurs and at one point the detective used a set of keys to repeatedly scrape a wound on Whirl’s leg until it was bloody and raw. Whirl said he had no immediate plans other than to eat something that isn’t fried like the majority of the food is in prison.
Whirl said he is looking forward to doing simple things he hasn’t been allowed to do for over half his life like chewing bubble gum for the first time in more than 20 years. He also said he would like to help other inmates, as he did while he was in prison, with legal work.
Whirl was unsure about whether he might file a lawsuit, saying he needed to talk to his attorneys. One of those attorneys, Tara Thompson of the University of Chicago Exoneration Project, said that she and other attorneys needed to speak with Whirl to determine what legal action they might take next.
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