The search for the real killer of teenagers Jerry Hillard and girlfriend Marilyn Green in a park on Chicago's South Side in 1982 is at the heart of an upcoming defamation case that one legal scholar says carries with it so many underlying social and public safety issues that it rises to the level of “national importance.”
“Issues of wrongful convictions, crime prevention, forced confessions, and the role of innocence projects are all wrapped up in this case,” Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, former Dean of the University of Missouri School of Law and co-reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Defamation & Privacy, told the Cook County Record.
“A frank public airing of this case is required here,” she added. “We need to know who is lying and who is telling the truth.”
Paul Ciolino
In the case, private investigator Paul Ciolino named eight defendants in the defamation complaint, including former Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, over allegations in a 2014 documentary film “A Murder in the Park” that Ciolino targeted Alstory Simon and intimidated him in 1999 into a false confession for the shooting deaths of the teenagers.
The Simon confession resulted in the release from prison of Anthony Porter, convicted of the crime in 1983 based on eyewitness accounts. In 1998, Porter was just two days away from being executed when a stay was granted. The public shock of Porter’s nearly being executed for a crime it appeared he did not commit led to the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois.
Ciolino worked the investigation with Northwestern University Journalism Professor David Protess, who at the time directed the Innocence Project, a Medill School of Journalism effort which identified and worked to free those wrongfully convicted. A group of Protess’ journalism students also aided in the investigation.
The case turned on its head again when in 2014 Alvarez ordered Simon’s release, saying at the time: "This investigation by David Protess and his team involved a series of alarming tactics that were not only coercive and absolutely unacceptable by law enforcement standards, they were potentially in violation of Mr. Simon's constitutionally-protected rights.”
Produced by Whole Truth Films, “A Murder in the Park,” through interviews with the witnesses to the murders and crime scene experts, concludes Porter was guilty. Simon’s confession, the film also concludes, was coerced by Ciolino. The owner of the film company Andrew Hale is named as a defendant, as is Simon, and his attorney Terry Eckl. Also named are a former spokesperson for the Chicago Fratneral Order of Police Martin Preib, attorney James Sotos, author William Crawford, and retired Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and Explosives agent James DeLorto, who worked for the Simon legal team.
The complaint claims that the defendants were motivated to undermine both the Porter exoneration for its role in abolishing the death penalty (the “poster boy” for the bid to end executions, they called him according to the complaint), and the work of the Innocence Project.
“Defendant DeLorto publicly opined that Protess, Ciolino and Northwestern’s ‘innocence’ work was all a ‘liberal conspiracy’ and that the public had been hoodwinked and ‘good coppers’ were paying the price,” the complaint says.
Lidsky said that speculating about the motivations of the defendants is fair game for the plaintiff’s legal team, led by New York City-based attorney Jennifer Bonjean, if Ciolino conducted an ethical and fair investigation and interview.
“You can’t recklessly disregard the truth resulting in the lowering of someone’s reputation,” she said. “That would be defamatory.”
But she said if the defense can show that Ciolino and Protess conducted an unethical investigation then their case will “backfire.”
“You never know what’s going to happen in the courtroom,” Lidsky said. “If this turns against them, then the reputation of the plaintiff is even worse off in the court of law and of public opinion.”
The outcome of the case, she said, will hinge in part on what evidence Alvarez saw that convinced her to release Simon from prison. In 2018, Simon reached a sealed settlement deal in a lawsuit against Northwestern and Protess – a settlement Lidsky said means the public might infer unethical tactics were used, but can’t yet be proven.
In 2011, Protess left Northwestern after the University investigated his actions in a separate murder conviction, that of Anthony McKinney, from fall 2003 through spring 2006. At the time, Northwestern released a statement that said in part: “Protess knowingly misrepresented the facts and his actions to the University, its attorneys and the dean of Medill on many documented occasions. He also misrepresented facts about these matters to students, alumni, the media and the public.”
Lidsky said that understanding how the Innocence Project worked and any “underlying politics” involved is critical for the approach similar projects take in other universities.
The case is pending in Cook County Circuit Court. Discovery is scheduled to begin in October.