Exonerated man awarded $25 million CHICAGO, Jan. 25 (UPI) -- A federal jury in Chicago has awarded $25 million in damages to a man who served more than 16 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, his attorney said. The award to Thaddeus Jimenez is believed to be one of the biggest verdicts of its kind in Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday. Unless it is overturned on appeal, the city will be on the hook for the money. Jimenez was just 13 years old when he was arrested in 1993 for a slaying on Chicago's Northwest Side. He was released from prison in May 2009 after lawyers and students from Northwestern University's Bluhm Center on Wrongful Convictions located two key witnesses who recanted their original claims that Jimenez was the gunman. His attorney Jon Loevy said detectives had pressured witnesses to say Jimenez was the killer. Not long after he was charged, the real killer confessed to the crime on audiotape but prosecutors did not pursue it, the newspaper said.