Falsely imprisoned man to walk free

CHICAGO (AP):

A man who says Chicago police tortured him until he confessed to a rape he didn't commit was expected to walk out of an Illinois prison yesterday after 30 years behind bars.

Stanley Wrice's release from the Pontiac Correctional Center comes after Cook County Judge Richard Walsh overturned Wrice's conviction on Tuesday, saying officers lied about how they treated him.

The ruling was just the latest development in one of the darkest chapters of Chicago Police Depart-ment history, in which officers working under former Lieutenant Jon Burge were accused of torturing suspects into false confessions and torturing witnesses into falsely implicating people in crimes.

Wrice has insisted for years that he confessed to the 1982 sexual assault after officers beat him in the groin and face. And a witness testified at a hearing Tuesday that he falsely implicated Wrice in the rape after two Chicago police officers under Burge's command tortured him.

Wrice, 59, was sentenced to 100 years in prison.