GALESBURG, Ill. (AP) — A prison inmate who alleged he was tortured by Chicago police into confessing to a murder he did not commit was released from prison Wednesday after spending a quarter of a century behind bars.

Shawn Whirl walked out of Hill Correctional Center in Galesburg shortly after noon, two months after an Illinois appeals court overturned his 1991 murder conviction in the fatal shooting of Chicago cabdriver Billy G. Williams and one day after a Cook County judge dismissed the charges against him.

"It hasn't quite hit me yet," the 45-year-old Whirl said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press as he was driven away from the prison. "I didn't cry when I got out because I think I cried so much trying to fight this wrong, (and) I think I am kind of out of tears right now."

Whirl alleged he was tortured into confessing by a detective who worked under disgraced former Chicago police commander Jon Burge. Whirl said he was slapped, stepped on and subjected to racial slurs. He said at one point, the detective used a set of keys to repeatedly scrape a wound on Whirl's leg until it was bloody and raw.