Day: April 20, 2014

Ex-death row inmate Anthony Porter angry, feels ‘cheated’ out of money

April 20, 2014

Anthony Porter is angry.

He’s come within hours of being executed after he was convicted of killing two people.

He was freed from Death Row after another man, Alstory Simon, confessed to the murders.

He got a pardon, but he didn’t get a dime when he sued the city and the cops for framing him.

And now, there’s a serious push to strip away what little Porter has left: his claim of innocence.

Attorneys pushing for Simon’s release from prison say the justice system got it right the first time — that the evidence points to Porter all along in the notorious double murder in 1982 at a South Side park.

Porters’ friends and supporters argue that a racist conspiracy is trying to rewrite history and make a victim, Porter, into a villain once again.

“Yeah, I’m innocent, man,” Porter said in an interview that was sometimes tense and combative.

“They keep on bringing the same old stuff up,” Porter told the Chicago Sun-Times, as he was surrounded by supporters.

“I ain’t got no peace of mind,” he said. “I’m suffering. I’m tired.”

The questions about Porter’s innocence have been coming up more frequently as the attorneys for Simon argue he was set up.

Those lawyers accuse Richard Devine, the Cook County state’s attorney at the time, of bowing to political pressure and accepting a guilty plea from Simon despite strong evidence pointing to Porter. Devine has said politics had nothing to do with his decision.

Last fall, Devine’s successor, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, agreed to review the circumstances of Simon’s confession and imprisonment.

And that makes Porter furious.

He and his supporters say the review of Simon’s case is part of a conspiracy to discredit the anti-death penalty movement that embraced Porter as a symbol of a broken justice system. Former Gov. George Ryan, who pardoned Porter, has said the case factored heavily in his decision to impose a moratorium on the death penalty.

“They’re trying to destroy me and Gov. Ryan at the same time,” Porter said.

Porter, 59, said he can’t walk on the street without people pointing at him because of the renewed questions about the murders of Jerry Hillard and Marilyn Green.

In an interview last week, Porter gave a rambling but impassioned defense of his innocence. A longtime supporter, Maurice Perkins, president of the Bronzeville-based Inner City Youth and Adult Foundation Inc., was at his side, helping him respond to questions because — Perkins said — of Porter’s low IQ. Tests have shown Porter has an IQ of 51, which was a factor in his getting “railroaded,” Perkins said.

Porter wore a beige suit and suede shoes during an interview in the historic Swift mansion at 45th and Michigan, the headquarters of the foundation.

The stress from the renewed questions about his innocence have made him sick, Porter said. He needs surgery for a gall bladder ailment, he said.

Porter also said he lost his former wife, two children and a grandchild in a fire in Alabama a few years ago.

He does odd jobs for the foundation and speaks to youth groups, but the stigma of the case prevents him from landing a full-time job, he said.

“They damaged my name. I’ve been cheated out of my money,” he said.

Porter did receive about $145,000 in restitution from Illinois in 2000, but in a court deposition, he said he didn’t keep much of it, spending a large chunk on a Lincoln Navigator SUV and giving money to churches and supporters.

And suing the city got him nothing.

Attorney Walter Jones, who represented the city in the lawsuit, said he supports the review of Simon’s murder case.

“I am like any ex-prosecutor,” Jones said. “I want the truth to come out. I certainly believe I heard the truth come out during the course of the trial. I never met the man, Alstory Simon. All I can tell you is the truth that came out in my trial always said: ‘It is Anthony Porter.’ ”

When Porter was sent to Death Row for the 1982 killings of the couple in the bleachers near a pool in Washington Park, he’d never accused the police of abusing him physically.

Now, he alleges he was tortured in the same way detectives working under former police Cmdr. Jon Burge allegedly coerced confessions from suspects.

“They beat me, stomped me,” Porter said. “They put a plastic bag over my head.”

Porter has never confessed to the murders, though, and has steadfastly denied being in Washington Park when the killings happened.

“I wasn’t in no park,” he angrily repeated last week.

Witnesses at his trial in 1983 said otherwise.

One of the prosecution witnesses, William Taylor, testified at the trial that he saw Porter pull the trigger. Taylor would later modify his testimony and say that while he saw Porter in the park, he did not see the actual murders.

Porter was convicted of the murders and of robbing a man of $2 at gunpoint at the pool just minutes before the shootings in the nearby bleachers.

But the convictions unraveled after Northwestern University professor David Protess, his journalism students and private investigator Paul Ciolino famously reinvestigated the case in 1998.

Ciolino went to Milwaukee and obtained a videotaped confession from Simon, a convicted robber.

Just two days after the explosive video was aired on TV, prosecutors released Porter.

But Simon’s attorneys, Terry Ekl and James Sotos, claim Simon was tricked into confessing. Ciolino played a videotape for Simon of an actor pretending to have witnessed Simon commit the murders.

Simon was sentenced to 37 years in prison. He’s eligible for parole in 2017.

In an interview, Porter insisted all of the witnesses against him have recanted their testimony.

Perkins said those witnesses made up stories about Porter because he was known as a bully in their neighborhood and they wanted to get rid of him.

Indeed, Porter’s lengthy rap sheet includes two other robbery convictions and a conviction for shooting a man in the head during an argument over a dog. The man survived with a graze wound.

Some of the witnesses to the 1982 double murder were threatened by police to identify Porter as the killer, Perkins claimed.

He said the witnesses later decided to tell the truth and recant their statements against Porter.

But several of those witnesses were recently interviewed for a feature-length documentary called “Porter” and have renewed their allegations against him.

The film, due to be released this summer, is directed by Shawn Rech, a Cleveland-area resident who produces the “Crime Stoppers Case Files” show. It’s partially funded by Chicago attorney Andy Hale, who represents police officers in lawsuits claiming misconduct.

In one interview in the documentary, reviewed by the Sun-Times, Taylor said: “I saw Anthony Porter run past down the bleachers right past me out of the south gate.”

“Anthony Porter, I still think in my heart, is guilty,” Taylor said.

Another witness, Kenneth Edwards, said: “I am positive that Anthony Porter killed those two people. I saw it with my own eyes.”

Edwards, now serving a prison term for murder, said he heard a “pow, pow.”

“I saw Porter, I saw Tony Porter, and I saw him do it,” he said.

In the documentary, Jacqueline Green, a sister of murder victim Marilyn Green, also suggests Porter was the culprit. “It makes me angry that a killer could be walking out free when they took someone’s life and changed my life forever,” she said.

Porter, though, said he remains on good terms with the Green family, and notes Marilyn Green’s mother believes Simon did it.

In a strange new twist to an already complex case, meanwhile, Porter and Perkins say they were both recently paid $500 “bribes” in return for Porter appearing on camera for the documentary.

Perkins said he and Porter were offered “thousands” more if Porter would confess.

Simon’s attorneys deny involvement in an offer to pay for Porter to confess.

Rech, the director of the documentary, acknowledges giving Porter and Perkins $500 each at Perkins’ request.

“We thought it would add authenticity to have the real guy [Porter] in the movie saying he didn’t do it,” Rech said.

But Rech denies he or anyone else in his project offered a bonus to Porter to confess.

Perkins insists that racist, pro-law enforcement motivations are driving the renewed questions of Porter’s innocence.

“You’re trying to rewrite history, man,” Perkins said.

Porter added: “I’m an innocent black man in Chicago.”

(suntimes.com)

Creating Monsters: How Solitary Confinement Hurts the Rest of Us

April 18, 2014

You need to watch only the first five minutes of Solitary Nation, the first of two Frontline documentaries that will air on PBS starting Tuesday. The inmates, corrections officers, and prison bureaucrats all appear stooped and burdened, tamped down, by the oppressive nature of the place in which they spend the bulk of their lives. That’s what prison is, of course, but Frontline captures something deeper here.

“This is what they create in here, monsters,” one inmate tells Frontline’s reporters. “You can’t conduct yourself like a human being when they treat you like an animal.”

“It’s like being buried alive,” another prisoner says off camera.

Now, every inmate in the history of the world likely has complained about the conditions of his confinement. But the point of the film, I think—and perhaps the best argument against the continued use of solitary—is that regardless of how inmates feel about it, there is no redeemable value to it to the rest of us.

Solitary confinement surely makes prisons safer—that’s the argument wardens use over and over again to justify its continued use. But it also creates or exacerbates mental illness in the men who are condemned to it. And that illness, in turn, pushes inmates in solitary to engage in harmful or self-harming conduct that, in turn, prompts a severe disciplinary response from prison officials.

That, in turn, causes the men to turn deeper into their own insanity. And then these broken men are released back into the world without adequate mental health treatment or “step down” services that will help reduce their chances of recidivism. It’s a cycle everyone recognizes but cannot seem to change. It’s madness upon madness.

Adam Brulotte, one of the inmates featured in the film, gets caught in this cycle. He’s a young man who says he wants to study for his GED so he can get a real job, instead of selling drugs, when he is released. Because he has broken the rules, he is placed in isolation. And because he is in isolation, he goes mad. And because he goes mad, he breaks more rules. The prison is safer but we see Brulotte broken before our eyes. If this young man is not treated now, how much will the rest of us pay when he is ultimately released?

You don’t have to sympathize with the inmates featured in this documentary to appreciate just how broken the prison system is today. Solitary Nation is a valuable addition to the growing body of work that slowly is pushing America away from this form of confinement. It shows the blood and the feces and the numbing foulness of solitary for humanizing both prisoner and guard, and it chronicles the ambiguities that exist in these cases (is the inmate truly mentally ill or just faking it?).

There are, however, a few critical elements missing from the documentary. Because the stage is set in Maine, I guess, there is virtually no reference to the oppressive racial component to solitary confinement (or to American prisons more generally). Almost every single one of the faces that appears on film is white. Perhaps this means that white viewers will more fully empathize with what they are seeing. But I’d love for the journalists who created Solitary Nation to undertake the same sort of project in a southern prison.

Nor is there any insight in the film into the enormous political and financial pressures that coalesce around prisons. Even progressive wardens like Rodney Bouffard in Maine, who comes off in the documentary as a reasonable man trying to make the best of a bad situation, must negotiate with officials of the guards’ union in order to effect changes that might impact prison security. And even the harshest wardens must beg for funds from state lawmakers. These dynamics drive prison policies. They are an inescapable part of the story.

Nor did the film even attempt to offer broad answers to the many questions that surround the use of solitary confinement today. Why are lawmakers continuing to endorse policies and practices that make men mad and then toss them out onto a largely unsuspecting society? Why is there political reluctance to provide adequate mental health care to inmates, even when there is such strong evidence that it saves money (and perhaps lives)? The film raises many smart and poignant questions but sadly does not answer them.

The next installment in this series, Prison State, will air the final week of April, and perhaps viewers will get some answers then. But of course if there were easy answers here, the scandal of solitary confinement would not exist today. When I watched Solitary Nation the first time, I brought to it all of the prison stories I have covered over the past few years. When I watched it a second time, with someone who has not been so immersed, I saw the dread creep up over his face. Good, I thought, it’s long past time that America saw the horror of all this.

It’s not just the immorality of the solitary confinement that shines through in this worthwhile film. It’s the futility of it. Frustration and despair hang over the characters the way that fetid, stagnant air hangs in the tiny, soulless cells that host the 80,000 or so men and women living and dying today in solitary confinement in America. Both captive and captor seem to understand, as they interact amid the blood and the shit and the anguish, that its use is not just inhumane but utterly self-defeating.

http://www.theatlantic.com