After Chicago police detective Jon Burge was discovered to have extracted forced confessions from more than 200 suspects, the governor of Illinois commuted the death sentences of 167 prisoners and pardoned four others.

Jon Graham Burge was an American police detective and commander in the Chicago Police Department. He was found guilty of lying about "directly participating in or implicitly approving the torture" of at least 118 people in police custody in order to force false confessions.

A forced confession is a confession obtained from a suspect or a prisoner by means of torture or other forms of duress. Depending on the level of coercion used, a forced confession is not valid in revealing the truth. The individuals being interrogated may agree to the story presented to them or even make up falsehoods themselves in order to satisfy the interrogator and discontinue their suffering.

In law, a commutation is the substitution of a lesser penalty for that given after a conviction for a crime. The penalty can be lessened in severity, in duration, or both. Unlike most pardons by government and overturning by the court, a commutation does not affect the status of a defendant's underlying criminal conviction.

A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the jurisdiction.