Anthony Porter case breaks wide open; the Porter story triggered the emptying of Illinois' death row

I had a hunch that something was up with this case, as you'll read in these Marathon Pundit posts here and here. Not everything added up to me when I read the press reports of Anthony Porter's civil suit against the City of Chicago. Porter lost the case, as this AP story explains.

Here is the part of that story that caught my eye:

And an attorney for the city in the civil trial argued that police had the right man in Porter.

"The killer has been sitting in that room right there all day," Walter Jones said, pointing to the table where Porter sat.

Tonight CBS 2 Chicago's John Drummond, in an exclusive story, has dropped a bombshell on the Chicago's media and the local legal community.

This is what I'm wondering at this late hour. Will the rest of the local media pursue Simon's story as aggressively as it did other controversial high-profile cases, such as Roland Cruz/Alex Hernandez/Brian Dugan, or the 1999 version of the Anthony Porter case?

From CBS 2 Chicago:

The push is on to get a convicted killer a new trial. Attorneys for Alstory Simon believe their client was framed and plan to petition the courts Thursday.

John Drummond has the CBS 2 exclusive.

It was the Anthony Porter case that triggered then Gov. George Ryan's moratorium on the death penalty.

Porter was released in 1999 after a Milwaukee man, Alstory Simon, confessed to a private investigator retained by Northwestern University, that Simon, not Porter, killed two people in Washington Park back in 1982.

"I just pulled it up and started shooting," Simon said in his confession.

But now, two Chicago area attorneys, Jim Sotos and Terry Ekl, contend that Simon was coerced and pressured into that confession and that Simon was not the killer.

"People working on Anthony Porter's behalf framed Alstory Simon for a crime he did not commit, with fabricated, false, and flimsy evidence," Sotos said.

"I would not be involved with Alstory Simon unless I felt he was innocent and an injustice had occurred," Ekl said.

Sotos and Ekl say that veteran private investigator Paul Ciolino made several promises or money and leniency to Simon to persuade him to confess. Ciolino disagrees.

"The only promise I made to him was that I would try to make sure he didn't get the death penalty," Ciolino said.

Ciolino denies that he did anything improper.

"I don't have any rules. The Supreme Court says I can lie, cheat, and do anything I can to get him to say whatever I want him to say. The Chicago Police Department is a master at that. So is every other police department," Ciolino said.

Simon's estranged wife, Inez, told Northwestern's Project Innocence in 1999 that she witnessed her husband kill the two people in Washington Park in 1982. One year later she implicated him again.

But in a videotaped statement taped earlier this month by investigators working for Sotos and Ekl, Inez Simon, in failing health, says that she was offered money in 1999 to say that her husband was the killer. Now she recants that version and claims her husband was innocent all along.

Professor David Protess of the Northwestern University Project Innocence denied that neither he nor his staff made any promises of compensation to Inez Simon or her family. He said there is no question about Alstory Simon's guilt.

Lawyers Sotos and Ekl will request the court vacate the conviction of Simon, who's serving a 37-and-a-half-year sentence in Danville.

There is a video link on the CBS 2 Chicago web site.

Technorati tags: Anthony Porter Northwestern Alstory Simon David Protess death penalty capital punishment Project innocence