The accused were dead; so too was the rape victim. All the city had left to defend itself against a nearly 60-year-old allegation of police brutality were decades-old court transcripts that were read in court by actors.

Still, on Wednesday, a federal jury found in the city's favor, rejecting a 79-year-old African-American man's civil rights lawsuit contending that he was beaten and physically threatened into confessing that he raped a white woman on the South Side in 1951.

Attorneys for Oscar Walden Jr. sought $15 million in the extraordinary lawsuit, which made it to trial so many decades following the alleged abuse — despite the usual statute of limitations — after then-Gov. George Ryan granted Walden a pardon in 2002.

Walden, now a minister, testified over two days, recounting an interrogation that he said included threats that he'd be strung up in his cell with a rope if he didn't confess. Experts testified that the Chicago police routinely coerced confessions from African-American men in the 1950s.