$13 Million Awarded to Exonerated Illinois Prisoner Tortured to Confess by Corrupt Cops
by Chuck Sharman
Under terms of a settlement executed on March 16, 2026, the City of Chicago agreed to pay $13 million to Arnold Day, 63, for the 26 years he spent in Illinois prisons because a now-retired cop with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) had him tortured until he falsely confessed to a 1991 murder. With the payout, the City has now paid over $93 million to exonerated prisoners victimized by former Off. Kenneth Boudreau.
Boudreau, now 66, is one of a half-dozen former CPD cops trained in such strong-arm tactics by disgraced former CPD Det. Jon Burge, who died in 2018. They have been blamed for falsely convicting dozens of people who were later exonerated, resulting in civil suits that have cost the City over $130 million in settlements, according to WTTW in Chicago.
Burge, who was blamed for torturing false confessions from 118 people, was fired from the CPD in 1993. But the statute of limitations had expired by the time his crimes were exposed, so he could be prosecuted only on related charges of obstruction of justice and perjury, for which he was sentenced to a four-year federal prison term in 2011. Most of his victims were similarly limited in what they could recover to a portion of a $5.5 million reparations package approved by the City Council in 2015, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Oct. 2015, p.60.]
Day was sentenced to 60 years in prison in March 1994 for fatally shooting Jerrod Irving, 16, during a robbery three years earlier. The conviction was based largely on the confession that Day gave, after a suspect in a second shooting falsely named him as a co-conspirator in the murder of Rafael Garcia, 48. At trial for that killing in 1993, Day’s alibi proved sufficient for acquittal, but accused co-conspirator Anthony Jakes, 15 at the time of the murder, was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Meanwhile, Day’s connection to Irving’s killing was cemented by eyewitness Krona Taylor and another armed robbery suspect, Ralph Watson. Like Day, they both later said that their testimonies had been coerced —though Day withheld his confession until arresting Off. Judd Evans stomped his head and another Burge protégé, Det. William Foley, threatened to toss him out the window.
After Burge’s 2008 conviction, Illinois established its Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (TIRC) to examine related claims. When it got around to Day’s claims in 2017, the TIRC found them wild—including the threat to defenestrate the detainee—but credible. A special prosecutor was appointed to handle new post-conviction relief petitions for both Day and Jakes, who had been paroled in 2013. The following year, their convictions were vacated and all charges dropped. Day was then released from prison.
In 2019, he was awarded $230,810 from the state Wrongful Conviction Compensation fund for the more than 26 years he spent in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. That same year, Day was granted a Certificate of Innocence, clearing the way for a civil rights lawsuit filed with aid of attorneys from Loevy + Loevy in Chicago. The case proceeded to Defendants’ motion to dismiss, which the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois largely rejected on December 18, 2025. Summary judgment for the City’s indemnification and respondeat superior claims was also denied.
After that, the parties proceeded to reach their settlement agreement, with a payout that included costs and fees for Loevy + Loevy attorneys Heather L. Donnell, Renee Spence, Arthur R. Loevy, Gayle M. Horne and Jonathan I. Loevy, plus fellow attorney Steven Greenberg of Greenberg Trial Lawyers, also in Chicago. See: Day v. Boudreau, USDC (N.D. Ill.), Case No. 1:19-cv-07286.
In addition to Boudreau and Foley, exonerations from convictions have been blamed on Burge-trained former Dets. John Halloran, Michael Kill, James O’Brien and Michael Clancy, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, Oct. 3, 2014, online; and June 20, 2018, online.]
Additional source: WTTW
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