Anthony Porter, Exoneree Whose Case Spurred Abolition of Death Penalty in Illinois, Has Died

Anthony Porter, an Illinois death-row exoneree whose case sparked a chain of events that ulti­mate­ly led the state to abol­ish the death penal­ty, has died. He was 66 years old.

In 1983, Porter was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of two teenagers in a south­side Chicago park. No phys­i­cal evi­dence linked him to the mur­ders, but after more than 17 hours of coer­cive inter­ro­ga­tion, anoth­er man, William Taylor, told police that he had seen Porter com­mit the murders. 

Porter came with­in 50 hours of exe­cu­tion in September 1998, when the Illinois Supreme Court, con­cerned that Porter was men­tal­ly incom­pe­tent because of his low IQ, issued a stay and ordered a hear­ing on his men­tal capac­i­ty. While that hear­ing was pend­ing, jour­nal­ism stu­dents at Northwestern University began inves­ti­gat­ing his case and found that Taylor, who was in the park’s swim­ming pool at the time of the mur­ders, could not have seen the killings. Taylor recant­ed his tes­ti­mo­ny and signed an affi­davit say­ing that Chicago police had threat­ened, harassed, and intim­i­dat­ed him into naming Porter.

The stu­dents’ inves­ti­ga­tion led them to anoth­er man who gave a video­taped con­fes­sion to the mur­ders. Porter was exon­er­at­ed in 1999.

After gain­ing his free­dom, Porter’s 17 years of wrong­ful incar­cer­a­tion, intel­lec­tu­al impair­ments, and lack of mean­ing­ful com­pen­sa­tion left him in con­tin­u­ing finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ty. He told the Chicago Tribune in February 1999, ​“Everybody keeps talk­ing about a job. A job is all right but they took 17 years out of my life. What kind of job am I going to do?” The $145,875 in resti­tu­tion from Illinois in 2000 was the sole com­pen­sa­tion he received.

Porter’s death was announced July 7, 2021 by Jim Montgomery, who rep­re­sent­ed Porter in an unsuc­cess­ful civ­il suit against the city of Chicago aris­ing out of Porter’s wrong­ful con­vic­tion. Montgomery told WBBM Newsradio that Porter had died ear­li­er in the week. 

In the wake of Porter’s exon­er­a­tion, Governor George Ryan declared a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in January 2000 and estab­lished a spe­cial gov­er­nor’s com­mis­sion to study the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem. In announc­ing the mora­to­ri­um, Ryan said, ​“I can­not sup­port a sys­tem which … has proven so fraught with error and has come so close to the ulti­mate night­mare, the state’s tak­ing of innocent life.”

On January 10, 2003, three days before his term of office end­ed, Ryan issued par­dons to four death-row pris­on­ers whom he con­clud­ed were inno­cent. The fol­low­ing day, he issued the largest blan­ket grant of clemen­cy to death-row pris­on­ers in U.S. his­to­ry, com­mut­ing the sen­tences of the state’s 167 death row pris­on­ers to life terms. Ryan’s 171 grants of clemen­cy account for near­ly 60% of the 294 human­i­tar­i­an grants of clemen­cy to U.S. death-row pris­on­ers since 1976. 

Porter’s post-con­vic­tion lawyer, Lawrence Marshall, who lat­er became co-founder and legal direc­tor of Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, called Porter’s case ​“per­haps the most sig­nif­i­cant” of the Illinois cas­es that led to Governor Ryan’s clemen­cies. Marshall, who is now a pro­fes­sor at Stanford Law School, told the Chicago Tribune that “[t]he spec­ta­cle of [Porter] hav­ing come so close to exe­cu­tion, lit­er­al­ly with­in two days, lit­er­al­ly hav­ing been fit for a suit for the cof­fin, and only lat­er through Northwestern stu­dents for the truth to emerge about his absolute inno­cence was some­thing that was hard for any fair-mind­ed per­son to ignore. It gen­er­at­ed a sense of out­rage. I remem­ber it being said that sev­er­al peo­ple said, ​‘What does it mean that we need col­lege stu­dents to be able to deter­mine that we have an inno­cent man we’re about to kill?’ So it was very moving.”

Ryan’s action pre­cip­i­tat­ed the end of the death penal­ty in Illinois. On March 9, 2011, Governor Pat Quinn signed into law a bill repeal­ing the death penal­ty, replac­ing it with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. Quinn also com­mut­ed the death sen­tences of the 15 peo­ple then on the state’s death row to life without parole.

In a Discussions With DPIC pod­cast in October 2020, Governor Ryan told DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham that Porter’s exon­er­a­tion and release opened his eyes to prob­lems with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as admin­is­tered in Illinois. ​“I was just a few months into my term when I was sit­ting in the Mansion in Springfield, Illinois, watch­ing the news out of Chicago,” Ryan said. ​“My wife and I were there. The news says that here’s a … guy named Anthony Porter, who just been released after 16 years on death row. … 

“I said to my wife, how does that hap­pen in America? How do you … put some­body in jail for 16 years of their life and each morn­ing, when they wake up, they have to won­der, ​‘Today, am I going to get exe­cut­ed or not?’ … So that’s what real­ly trig­gered my total thought on it. And that’s when I start­ed to look into things.”

Many exonerees are tar­gets of efforts by police and pros­e­cu­tors to dis­par­age their inno­cence, and Porter faced a vir­u­lent ver­sion of that phe­nom­e­non. In 2014, Alstory Simon recant­ed his con­fes­sion, claim­ing that Paul Ciolino, an inves­ti­ga­tor work­ing with the stu­dents, and their pro­fes­sor David Protess had coerced him into admit­ting hav­ing com­mit­ted the killings. Without going so far as to say Porter was guilty, then-State Attorney Anita Alvarez asked the Illinois courts to release Simon, cit­ing alleged uncer­tain­ty over who had com­mit­ted the murders.

Ciolino has filed a defama­tion suit against Simon alleg­ing, in the words of his attor­ney, Jennifer Bonjean, ​“that a group of strong­ly pro-police lawyers, their inves­ti­ga­tor, and a Chicago Police offi­cer pub­licly ped­dled the lie that Ciolino framed Alstory Simon by coerc­ing a video­taped con­fes­sion from him.”

Fifteen peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed from death-row in Cook County since 1973, more than twice as many as in any oth­er coun­ty in the United States. A DPIC analy­sis of the exon­er­a­tion data found that all of those cas­es involved either offi­cial mis­con­duct or perjury/​false accu­sa­tion and 13 of the 15 involved both.