Anthony Porter (born 1955) was a prisoner on death row whose conviction was overturned in 1999 due to the investigation of two Northwestern University School of Law professors and students from the Medill School of Journalism, and is notable for being an exonerated death row inmate that was once 50 hours away from execution.[1]
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In August 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. Porter, then a 27 year old gang member, was implicated in the crime by William Taylor, who had been swimming in the pool at the time of the shooting. Initially, Taylor said that he had not seen the crime itself. Later, he said that he had seen Porter run past shortly after the shots. Eventually, after intensive interrogation, he claimed to have seen Porter actually firing the shots.
Police were given leads pointing toward other suspects, including information from Green's mother suggesting that a man named Alstory Simon had killed the pair for drug-related reasons, but they chose to pursue only Porter. Upon hearing that he was under suspicion, Porter went to the police in the hope of clearing his name. He was immediately arrested and charged with the two murders, one count of armed robbery, one count of unlawful restraint, and two counts of unlawful use of weapons.
After a short trial during which, according to court transcripts, Porter's lawyer fell asleep and never met with Porter himself until just before the start of proceedings, Judge Robert L. Sklodowski sentenced Porter to death, calling him a "perverse shark". An appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court was denied in February 1986, and an appeal to the United States Supreme Court was denied the following year. Porter continued to file appeals in the years that followed, delaying the execution.
In 1995 Porter was tested to have an IQ of 51, meaning that he may have been moderately retarded. A new appeal was filed on the grounds that Porter was incapable of understanding his punishment. Forty-eight hours before he was scheduled to be executed in 1998, another stay was granted.
In 1998, students in a journalism course taught by Northwestern University professor David Protess investigated the crime as part of a class assignment for the Medill Innocence Project. Two years earlier, evidence uncovered by students in the course had freed four men falsely accused of killing a suburban couple. This time, the students assigned to the Porter case gathered evidence exposing serious flaws in the prosecution. Student Tom McCann and a private investigator spoke to William Taylor, who, in December 1998, recanted his original confession, saying that Chicago police had "threatened, harassed and intimidated" him into accusing Porter. Another student noted that the shot had been fired by a left-handed shooter; Porter was right-handed.
On January 29, 1999, Inez Jackson, the estranged wife of Alstory Simon, came forward and said that she had been with Simon when he killed Hilliard in retaliation for "skimming money from drug deals." She also confirmed that she had never met or seen Porter. Her nephew, whose apartment Simon fled to after the shooting, came forward to corroborate her story. Four days later, on February 3, Simon himself confessed to the crime on videotape. Protess and the students came forward with the information. Two days later, Porter was released from prison, having spent 17 years on death row, and the charges against him were dropped the next month. Simon was formally charged with the murders. In September 1999, Alstory Simon pleaded guilty to two counts of second degree murder and was sentenced to 37½ years in prison. [1]
State officials initially denied any wrongdoing. Chicago's Mayor Daley, who had been head of the state's attorney's office during the prosecution, asserted that "It was a thorough case, it was reviewed. No one railroads anyone." Illinois Governor George Ryan suggested that the exoneration was evidence that the system worked. In light of the four men previously freed with the help of Protess' students, however, and the recently exposed mis-prosecution of Rolando Cruz and Alex Hernandez by Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan for the 1983 rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico, the problems could no longer be overlooked. Under intense pressure from the public and the media, Governor Ryan initiated a moratorium on executions in Illinois.