Anthony Porter

Anthony Porter (December 14, 1954 – July 5, 2021) was a Chicago resident convicted and sentenced to death in 1983 for the murder of two teenagers on the South Side of the city. He served 16 years on death row before he was exonerated in 1999 after new evidence was uncovered by Northwestern University professors and students from the Medill School of Journalism as part of their investigation for the school's Innocence Project. Porter had already made multiple appeals that were rejected, including by the US Supreme Court, and he was once 50 hours away from execution when another suspect was identified and confessed, in a process now considered highly controversial.

In 1999 the Medill Innocence Project identified Alstory Simon as the perpetrator of the murders. Simon, who was living in Chicago in the 1980s but had since returned to Milwaukee, confessed to the crime on videotape. After pleading guilty, Simon was convicted in 1999, and sentenced to years in prison. Simon later recanted his confession, saying that the confession was coerced by private investigator Paul Ciolino, who posed as a city police officer while working with the Innocence Project. David Protess, one of two professors involved with the Innocence Project, was suspended by Northwestern University in 2011 as a result of the controversy. Both witnesses against Simon, one of whom was discovered to be a paid actor who was never even at the scene, made videotaped recantations.

Anthony Porter filed a civil suit against the city, but a jury trial in 2005 found in favor of the city, the original police investigation, and prosecution. Alstory Simon filed suit in 2015 against Northwestern University's Innocence Project, and was awarded an undisclosed settlement in June 2018.

The 2014 documentary A Murder in the Park argued that Porter, who had been identified as the murderer by six eyewitnesses, was guilty, Alstory Simon was innocent and had been framed by Professor David Protess and his team from Northwestern University, who were more focused on undermining capital punishment in Illinois than learning the actual truth about the murders. In 2011, Porter was sentenced to a year in jail for retail theft. He died of an opioid overdose on July 5, 2021.

The crime

About 1 a.m. on August 15, 1982, two teenagers, Marilyn Green and her fiance Jerry Hillard, were shot and killed near a swimming pool in Washington Park on the south side of Chicago.

Anthony Porter, a 27-year-old gang member, was identified by several witnesses as being involved with the crime or near the crime scene. William Taylor, who had been swimming in the pool at the time of the shooting, initially said that he had not seen the shooting but had seen Porter run past shortly after the shots. He later said that he had seen Porter firing the shots. He was among six witnesses who identified Porter in the areas of the shooting, including one who said he had been robbed by Porter at gunpoint a short time earlier in the park.

Police were given leads pointing toward other suspects.

Two days later, Porter was released from prison on bail, after having spent 17 years on death row. The state dropped the charges against him the next month.

In 1999 Alstory Simon was formally charged with the two murders. In September 1999, Simon pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder and was sentenced to years in prison.

Recantation

In 2005, Inez Jackson and her nephew, Walter Jackson, both recanted their statements that implicated Simon in the crime. Inez Jackson was extremely ill and on her deathbed. They admitted that they had fabricated their stories in order to obtain money and help from professor David Protess in order to free Inez's son, Sonny Jackson, and her nephew, Walter Jackson, from prison. When Walter Jackson had first become involved in the case, he was incarcerated for first-degree murder.

Alstory Simon recanted his confession. He said that he had been pressured into making a false statement by Ciolino and another man. They posed as city police officers, and they showed him a videotape of an actor pretending to be a witness who implicated him in the crime. They promised him a short prison sentence and a movie deal if he confessed. He resigned from the university and by 2014 had become head of the Chicago Innocence Project. Alvarez said the investigation by the Medill Innocence Project "involved a series of alarming tactics that were not only coercive and absolutely unacceptable by law enforcement standards, they were potentially in violation of Mr. Simon's constitutionally protected rights."

Based on information revealed in Porter's suit, which detailed the work of the Innocence Project in gaining new material, Alstory Simon filed a post-conviction petition for relief January 2006 in his case. He noted that Ciolino and others had deceived him when they contacted him, including having an actor pretend to be a witness against him in the case. Furthermore, Ciolino had recommended a defense counsel who was a professional colleague and associate, in a clear conflict of interest. As a result, Simon said he was denied due process and did not have adequate defense counsel.

After Simon was finally exonerated, in 2014 he filed a civil federal civil rights suit against the Northwestern University Innocence Project, saying people associated with it had deceived and coerced him into a false confession to the murders of Hilliard and Green, which resulted in his being convicted of murder and serving 15 years in prison. In November 2018, he received an undisclosed settlement.

Ramifications

State officials initially denied any wrongdoing in the Porter case. Chicago's Mayor Richard M. Daley, who had been Illinois State Attorney during the prosecution of Porter, asserted that "It was a thorough case, it was reviewed. No one railroads anyone." Illinois Governor George Ryan suggested that the exoneration of Porter was evidence that the system worked.

The Northwestern University Innocence Project had earlier assisted in the exoneration of four men on death row. More recently, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez were found to have been wrongfully convicted after having been prosecuted by Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan for the 1983 rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. They were exonerated after having been sentenced to death.

Given these cases, in which several innocent men were found to have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death, there was intense pressure from the public and the media to make a change. After ordering a review of the state's cases, in 2000 Governor Ryan initiated a moratorium on executions in Illinois. In 2011 the state legislature passed a law abolishing use of the death penalty in the state and Governor Pat Quinn signed it into law.

Representation in other media The documentary A Murder in the Park (2014) explored the campaign to free Anthony Porter. It concluded that the original conviction of Porter was sound, and that Alstory Simon was wrongfully convicted. The film argues that David Protess and his team conducted a partial and imperfect investigation of the Porter conviction. It suggests they were more concerned with undermining Illinois' use of the death penalty than with finding the truth of the murders.