Chicago taxpayers will be asked to pay a combined $26.5 million to compensate two men who collectively spent a half-century in prison for murders they did not commit.

The largest of the two settlements on Thursday’s agenda for the City Council’s Finance committee — $18.5 million — would go to Francisco “Frankie” Benitez, who was convicted of the 1989 murder of two Humboldt Park teenagers solely on a confession allegedly coerced by a pair of Chicago police detectives.

Benitez’s lawsuit claims he was arrested and “kept in a locked interrogation room all night without sleep,” and that the detectives “brandished a flashlight menacingly” during the interrogation, feeding Benitez details about the crime.

After hours of interrogation, a “scared” and “exhausted” Benitez agreed to sign a stateme

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