Justice Perverted: How The Innocence Project at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism Sent an Innocent Man to Prison

Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune: “Should be on the reading list of every journalism school and law school in this country.”

In 1983, Anthony Porter was convicted of the brutal double murder of Marilyn Green and Jerry Hillard. While sitting in the bleachers near Chicago’s Washington Park swimming pool, the victims were shot multiple times at point-blank range. Porter was sentenced to death.

In 1998, within fifty hours of Porter’s scheduled execution, the Illinois Supreme Court granted a stay, pending a hearing on Porter’s mental competency. At this point, journalism professor David Protess and his Northwestern University Innocence Project students took up Porter’s cause. Soon, Porter was released from prison, and Alstory Simon, then a Milwaukee resident, was convicted of the Washington Park homicides.

But that’s not the end of the story. Nor is it all of the story. Simon himself has now been exonerated and is suing Northwestern University, David Protess, and two other individuals for more than $40 million in punitive damages. This is the true story of how and why Alstory Simon replaced Anthony Porter in prison.

William B. Crawford is a former reporter, writer and legal affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune. During a twenty-three-year career at the newspaper, he was the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize as well as many other major awards for his work. After leaving the newspaper, he was the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's senior vice president of global communications. In 2002, he co-founded O'Connell & Crawford LLC, a media strategy and crisis management firm. Rent Asunder is Crawford's first novel. Justice Perverted: How The Innocence Project at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism Sent an Innocent Man to Prison was his second book.