A Murder in the Park is a 2014 American true crime documentary directed by Shawn Rech and Brandon Kimber.
The documentary examines the controversial conviction of Alstory Simon, who served 15+ years in an Illinois prison for double homicide following a false confession, which in 1999 freed a man already convicted of the killings.
Synopsis
In 1982, Jerry Hillard and Marilyn Green were murdered in Chicago's Washington Park. Anthony Porter was found guilty of the murders and sentenced to death in 1983. In 1998, just hours before his scheduled execution and after serving 17 years in prison, Anthony Porter's execution was stayed by the Illinois Supreme Court out of concern for Porter's low IQ. Subsequently, led by David Protess, professor and founder of Northwestern University's Medill Innocence Project, a group of undergraduate journalism students executed a reinvestigation of Porter's case. They conducted a series of experiments to prove that Porter could not have been the killer.
The students claimed to have found the real killer, and through their efforts, Anthony Porter was released from prison and became the face of the anti-death penalty movement. They suspected another individual of committing the crime – Alstory Simon – whose ex-wife had claimed she was with Simon when he committed the murders. Members of the Medill Innocence Project, with the help of private investigator Paul Ciolino, came to Simon's apartment and told him the Chicago police were on their way to arrest him, and showed Simon a video of someone (later found to be an actor) saying they knew that he committed the murders. Allegedly through coercion, they produced a taped confession of Simon admitting to the murders.
Alstory Simon was convicted and sentenced to 37+1⁄2 years in prison. His defense attorney, Jack Rimland, was a friend and colleague of Paul Ciolino and encouraged Simon to accept a plea deal despite his innocence. Simon later recanted his confession. The intervention by Rimland was cited by prosecutor Anita Alvarez to vacate Simon's sentence. It was not until October 2013, and due in part to the investigation conducted for A Murder in the Park, that the Cook County State's Attorney's office reopened the case. Simon was freed in October 2014 after serving more than 15 years in prison. The documentary addresses many questionable actions by members of the Medill Innocence Project, including the possibility that they neglected to interview eyewitnesses from Anthony Porter's original case, and instead relied on their own findings and experiments. Additionally, Alstory Simon's ex-wife later recanted her statement that she had been with Simon during the murders.
Reception/Follow Up
A Murder in the Park made its world premiere at the DOC NYC Festival in New York City in 2014. A Murder in the Park was screened theatrically to a positive reception, and then aired on Showtime/The Movie Channel, followed by a run on Netflix.
A Murder in the Park was selected for Time magazine's list of “15 of the Most Fascinating True Crime Stories Ever Told” in 2016. The film also has a 76% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Simon filed a $40 million lawsuit against Northwestern University, David Protess, and Paul Ciolino in 2015. In 2018, the case resulted in a confidential settlement. Ciolino sued various parties who appeared in the film, claiming defamation of character. The suit was dismissed but an appeal is pending.
The state of Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011. This followed the conviction and subsequent release of Anthony Porter, an action that “reignited” debate in Illinois about capital punishment.
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 17 years on death row before 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 37+1⁄2 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. Two witnesses, one of whom was discovered to be a paid actor, also recanted their statements.
After a yearlong investigation, the charges against Simon were vacated by the Cook County State's Attorney's office and he was freed in 2014, after having served 15 years in prison. The Chicago double-murder case is still unsolved.
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 fiancé 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. They appeared to pursue only Porter. Upon hearing that he was under suspicion, Porter went to the police and turned himself in. 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, Porter was convicted of the murders. 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's defense counsel arranged testing of his client's mental capacity. He was found to have an IQ of 51, characterizing him as intellectually disabled. His counsel filed a new appeal on the grounds that Porter was incapable of understanding his punishment by the death penalty. In late 1998, forty-eight hours before he was scheduled to be executed, the court granted another stay.
Northwestern University investigation
At that time, students in a journalism course taught by Northwestern University professor David Protess investigated the Anthony Porter case as part of a class assignment for the Innocence Project of the Medill School of Journalism (it is now called the Medill Justice Project.) The students assigned to the Porter case gathered evidence through their investigation that exposed serious flaws in the prosecution.
Student Tom McCann and Private Investigator Paul J. Ciolino spoke to William Taylor who, in December 1998, recanted his original statements. He said that Chicago police had "threatened, harassed and intimidated" him into accusing Porter. But McCann and Ciolino did not speak to any other of the original six witnesses, or to the detectives who investigated the case.
On January 29, 1999, Inez Jackson, the estranged wife of Alstory Simon, then living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he was from, came forward to testify against him. He had lived in Chicago in the 1980s. She claimed that she had been with Simon when he killed Hilliard in retaliation for "skimming money from drug deals." She also said that she had never met or seen Porter. Her nephew Walter Jackson, whose apartment Simon allegedly fled to after the shooting, corroborated her story.
Simon was contacted at his home in Milwaukee by Ciolino and others associated with the Innocence Project. Four days later, on February 3, 1999, Simon went to the police and confessed to the crime in a videotaped session. Protess and the students introduced information from their investigation.
After representatives of the Cook County State's Attorney's office saw Simon's tape, it launched a new investigation into the Porter case.
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 37 ½ 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.
Protess and Ciolino vigorously denied any wrongdoing; they said that several Simon's claims are false, and they believed that he was guilty of the murders. In 2011, Northwestern University placed Protess on leave after finding that he had deliberately falsified evidence related to a subpoena issued by Cook County for his records in a different wrongful conviction case. He resigned from the university and by 2014 had become head of the Chicago Innocence Project.
Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez conducted a year-long investigation of Simon's case. She vacated the charges against him and ended his 37-year sentence in October 2014, ordering his release from prison. He had served for 15 years. The question of who committed the double murders is unanswered. 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."
Civil cases
After his release, in 2003 Anthony Porter sued the City of Chicago for $24 million. The City refused settlement and the case went to trial in 2005. After additional investigation, the City's attorney argued that Porter had in fact committed the killings. The jury found in favor of the City, thus the City was not liable for any damages, and Porter did not receive any settlement.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Murder_in_the_Park
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Porter
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