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| Jury Rejects Inmate's Claim |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 11/21/2005 |
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Illinois Jurors have rejected a former death row inmate's claims that Chicago police conspired to frame him for a double murder that he did not commit but for which he spent more than 16 years in prison and once came within two days of being executed. The jury decided last week that the city should not have to pay Anthony Porter the $24 million he sought in a lawsuit filed in March 2000, saying detectives weren't malicious in their investigation and had reason to focus on Porter as the lead suspect. "We are absolutely stunned," Porter's attorney, James Montgomery Jr., said after the verdict. "It is difficult to get inside the mechanization of the police force, and it is the police that control the facts." Porter's lawyers said they may appeal. Porter, who was freed in 1999 when another man confessed to the murders, named the city of Chicago, the police department, six detectives and two officers as defendants in the lawsuit. He received a $145,875 restitution check from the state in 2000. The lawsuit alleged police forced a witness to identify him as the killer of Jerry Hillard and Marilyn Green. The two were shot to death in Washington Park in 1982. During the weeklong civil trial, witness William Taylor testified that police had threatened and intimidated him into naming Porter as the gunman. Porter also alleged that police ignored information that would have led to the real killer and showed he wasn't in the park when the shootings occurred. Ultimately, a Northwestern University journalism teacher and some students investigating the case located Alstory Simon, a Milwaukee resident. Simon confessed to the murders, but since has recanted. The attorney representing the city in the civil trial claimed that's because police had the right man the first time around. "The killer has been sitting in that room right there all day," Walter Jones said while pointing to the table where Porter sat during the trial. Porter's case helped prompt former Gov. George Ryan to halt all executions in Illinois over fears that a flawed system had led to the wrongful convictions of 13 death row inmates. Just before leaving office in January 2003, Ryan commuted the death sentences of 167 inmates to life in prison and pardoned four others, declaring the state's capital justice system "haunted by the demon of error." Since then, the state has given the Supreme Court greater power to throw out unjust verdicts, offered defendants more access to evidence and barred the death penalty in cases that depend on a single witness. But Gov. Rod Blagojevich has kept the moratorium in place, saying he wants to see how the changes work before allowing executions to resume. |
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