This is just the Tip of the Iceberg
Check your Elite Privilege
June 1, 2018
Settlement reached in wrongful conviction lawsuit against Northwestern and former professor (Or was it wrongful?)
Simon’s lawsuit alleged Protess and Ciolino manufactured bogus evidence, coaxed false statements from witnesses and intimidated Simon into confessing to the August 1982 murders of Jerry Hillard and Marilyn Green in a South Side park.
The confession — and Porter's eventual release from prison — helped spur then-Gov. George Ryan to halt executions, a step toward the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois in 2011.
The case was again upended in 2014 when Cook County prosecutors agreed to throw out Simon's conviction, citing questions about the methods used to obtain his confession.
But in yet another twist, an internal memo obtained by the Tribune last year showed that then-State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez had disregarded results of a yearlong investigation by her top deputies when she decided to free Simon.
In the memo, which has never been released publicly, Assistant State’s Attorneys Fabio Valentini and Joseph Magats said they had concluded there was not sufficient evidence to warrant setting Simon free.
Alvarez gave a sworn deposition as part of the Simon case earlier this year that remains under seal.
Magats got him off and had the evidence selaed
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-alstory-simon-lawsuit-settlement-20180601-story.html
June 1, 2018
Settlement reached in wrongful conviction lawsuit against Northwestern and former professor (Or was it wrongful?)
Simon’s lawsuit alleged Protess and Ciolino manufactured bogus evidence, coaxed false statements from witnesses and intimidated Simon into confessing to the August 1982 murders of Jerry Hillard and Marilyn Green in a South Side park.
The confession — and Porter's eventual release from prison — helped spur then-Gov. George Ryan to halt executions, a step toward the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois in 2011.
The case was again upended in 2014 when Cook County prosecutors agreed to throw out Simon's conviction, citing questions about the methods used to obtain his confession.
But in yet another twist, an internal memo obtained by the Tribune last year showed that then-State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez had disregarded results of a yearlong investigation by her top deputies when she decided to free Simon.
In the memo, which has never been released publicly, Assistant State’s Attorneys Fabio Valentini and Joseph Magats said they had concluded there was not sufficient evidence to warrant setting Simon free.
Alvarez gave a sworn deposition as part of the Simon case earlier this year that remains under seal.
Magats got him off and had the evidence selaed
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-alstory-simon-lawsuit-settlement-20180601-story.html
More there where Kim Foxx was involed
"Simon was not a child or inexperienced at any relevant time," they wrote. "As of 1982 he had accumulated an extensive criminal history. He had been arrested for robberies or armed robberies five times between 1966 and 1977. He had three felony or armed robbery convictions. … He was 47 when he (pleaded) guilty. This certainly complicates his claims regarding coercion and being misled."
Indeed. And it complicates beyond redemption the argument that Protess and Ciolino attempted to pull off an audacious and irredeemably wicked con job, railroading an innocent man and springing a killer in order to score political points.
But that seems to have been the argument that Alvarez bought into. After receiving this report, she called a news conference and, all but ignoring the findings of the report she did not release, announced that there was "no other conclusion" than that Simon should be set free.
She unloaded on Protess, with whom she had feuded, and Ciolino, and she indicated she'd prosecute them if the statute of limitations would only allow.
Subsequently she declined to send representatives to contest Simon's effort to win a "certificate of innocence," a document that allows wrongfully incarcerated, factually innocent persons to collect cash damages from the state.
Simon lost in his first go around — a Cook County judge found that, though he probably didn't commit the murders, he was complicit in the deceptions that landed him in prison — but last month an appellate court sent the case back for rehearing.
Eric Sussman, first assistant to current Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx, Alvarez' successor, said Friday that the office has not yet decided whether to intervene and contest Simon's petition.
This bombshell also shatters the idea that Simon's defenders — led by police-friendly attorneys and members of law enforcement — are motivated by anything other than a desire to stick a finger in the eye of what they call the "innocence industry," the investigators, lawyers, activists and journalists who have shone an unflattering light on wrongful convictions.
It wasn't enough for them that they got Alvarez to take up their cause and release Simon despite what we now know to be a contrary recommendation from her own top staff. These advocates for Simon aren't the sort of folks who are known for going to bat for oft-convicted felons who proclaim their innocence from prison, after all.
It wasn't even enough for Simon's defenders that it appear to the public that the "innocence industry" got one wrong.
No. They had to try to establish a conspiracy in order to satisfy their passion to discredit those who have so often embarrassed their friends. They had to try to prove an elaborate plot so dark, sinister and far-reaching that it would discredit an entire movement.
Now Simon's defenders' efforts have led to the unearthing of a report that paints them as zealots and their champion as undeserving of freedom.
Ka-boom.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/zorn/ct-alvarez-innocence-report-simon-porter-zorn-perspec-0611-md-20170610-column.html
NP speaking Now live
https://www.c-span.org/congress/?chamber=house
Everyone of KIM FOXX's previous cases where the evidence was sealed should be investigated.
Anthony Porter is a Chicago resident and was a prisoner on death row, convicted of the 1982 murder of two teenagers, before his conviction was overturned in 1999, following the investigation of Northwestern University professors and students from the Medill School of Journalism as part of the Medill Innocence Project.