A newly exonerated Philadelphia man has been awarded $9.8 million after he spent 28 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit.
Per The Philadelphia Inquirer, the settlement is one of the largest ever in the city's history.
In 1991, 21-year-old Chester Hollman III - a man with no criminal record who worked as an armored-car driver - was pulled over by cops in Center City. He was later charged with the murder of a University of Pennsylvania student, who had died after being shot in a botched street robbery.
Hollman maintained his innocence from the moment he was arrested, Complex reports.
Then, in July 2019, a 49-year-old Hollman was released from prison, after spending nearly three decades behind bars.
As reported at the time by ABC News, a judge ordered Hollman to be released after witnesses recanted testimony and investigators found police had withheld evidence that would have possibly pointed to the true perpetrators of the crime.
ABC News adds that two witnesses who had originally testified at the 1993 trial recanted their earlier testimony, now saying that they did not see Hollman at the scene of the murder.
In 2019, Hollman's longtime lawyer Alan Tauber revealed that Hollman had no anger towards the witnesses, describing them as "victims too".
At the time of his exoneration, Assistant District Attorney Patricia Cummings also said in court:
"I apologize to Chester Hollman.
"I apologize because he was failed, and in failing him, we failed the victim, and we failed the community of the city of Philadelphia."
And on Wednesday (December 30), after being awarded a $9.8 million payout, Hollman said in a statement, per the Inquirer: "There are no words to express what was taken from me.
"But this settlement closes out a difficult chapter in my life as my family and I now embark on a new one."
Hollman's monumental payout is just $50,000 short of the record for settlements of its kind in the Philadelphia - a distinction held by the $9.85 million agreement the city struck in 2018 with Anthony Wright.
Wright had spent 25 years locked away for a 1991 rape and murder that DNA evidence later proved he did not commit.
In fact, Wednesday's agreement is just the latest in a string of seven-figure settlements that have arisen due to claims of misconduct by Philadelphia police in the late 1980s and 1990s.
The Inquirer reports that over a dozen exonerations have cost the city more than $35 million since 2018.
