The Illinois Supreme Court has cleared a private investigator at the center of one Chicago’s most famous wrongful murder conviction cases to continue with his defamation lawsuit against those involved with a documentary film that accused the P.I. of framing one man to get another man off death row.
On March 18, the state high court ruled investigator Paul Ciolino didn’t wait too long to file his defamation lawsuit against filmmaker Andrew Hale; Hale’s company, Whole Truth Films; and Chicago attorney Terry Ekl.
Hale and Whole Truth Films produced “Murder in the Park,” a documentary discussing the effort to convict Alstory Simon of a 1983 double homicide on Chicago’s southeast side. Ekl, an attorney who represented Simon, is among those whose comments are featured in the film.
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The documentary casts aspersions on the work by Ciolino and David Protess, a Northwestern University journalism professor, to secure the exoneration of Anthony Porter, by allegedly coercing Simon into confessing to the crimes that Porter for which Porter had been earlier convicted.
Porter’s exoneration later was used to persuade Illinois state officials to ban the death penalty in the state.
Simon was later cleared of the murder charges in 2013, after Ciolino and Protess were themselves accused of framing him.
Hale’s documentary was first screened at a film festival in New York in 2014.
However, Ciolino said he did not become aware of the documentary’s existence until at least one year later, when it was screened in Chicago and Cleveland. The film was later also shown on cable network, Showtime.
Ciolino filed a defamation suit in Cook County Circuit Court in 2018, demanding $25 million in damages.
That action, however, followed a counterclaim he had filed as part of the legal action launched by Simon in federal court against Ciolino and others for their parts in the case.
In his counterclaim, Ciolino also asserted defamation and conspiracy claims against Ekl and others. That counterclaim was dismissed in 2017, and Ciolino followed with his lawsuit in Cook County court.
Attorneys for Ekl sought to have the 2018 lawsuit canned, asserting Ciolino waited too long to bring his action. They claim the one-year statute of limitations expired in 2015, one year after the film debuted in New York.
Ciolino’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, of Chicago, however, argued Ciolino should be allowed to continue his action under the so-called “discovery rule,” which has allowed certain plaintiffs to sidestep the one-year time limit by arguing they were not aware of alleged defamatory statements or published media, until after the one-year limit had expired.
Bonjean argued that the one-year time limit should no longer apply in a world in which the internet and all of its varied publishing platforms, means people could go years before they become aware of an obscure defamatory blog or social media post, or a documentary film initially released to a limited audience far from where they live.
Ekl’s claims were upheld by Cook County Judge Christopher Lawler, who dismissed Ciolino’s lawsuit for arriving four years too late.
The Illinois First District Appellate Court then overturned that decision, determining the exception to the rule should apply in this case.
At the Illinois Supreme Court, however, justices said they didn’t believe any exception was required in Ciolino’s case.
Rather, they believed Ciolino filed within the one-year statute of limitations, because the screening of “Murder in the Park” in Chicago in 2015 should be considered a separate publication of the alleged defamatory documentary, distinct from the film’s debut in New York one year earlier.
When combined with Ciolino’s dismissed counterclaims against Ekl and others in the federal action, the P.I.’s 2018 lawsuit falls within the limits of the law.
The decision was authored by Justice Rita B. Garman. Justices Mary Jane Theis, P. Scott Neville, David K. Overstreet and Robert L. Carter concurred in the decision.
Justices said they did not believe the “distinct and limited screenings” in Chicago and Cleveland could be considered “part of the same audience,” as viewed the film in New York in 2014.
“Unlike, for example, an edition of a newspaper or magazine that was, upon its first publication, distributed to the general public, ‘Murder in the Park’ was first screened to a limited audience in New York City on Nov. 14, 2014,” Garman wrote in the opinion.
“This certainly constituted a publication of the allegedly defamatory material, and the premiere itself would be subject to the single-publication rule.
“However, we find that the subsequent screenings of ‘Murder in the Park’ to ‘sold-out audiences’ at the Cleveland International Film Festival and, critically, at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago were separate publications. Each of these screenings was shown to new and distinct audiences at different locations, dates, and times.”
Chief Justice Anne M. Burke and Justice Michael J. Burke did not take part in the decision.
Ekl was represented before the Illinois Supreme Court by attorney Jeremy N. Boeder, of the firm of Tribler Orpett & Meyer, of Chicago