Back in the day, Web was a frequently critic of the Innocence Project on the basis that they make the system look worse than it is. I never bought in to that argument, but recent revelations are quite disturbing:
The investigation by the Innocence Project, she said, “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.”
The truth took 15 years to come out. That’s 15 years that Simon, now 64, spent behind bars.
“Believe me, it is mentally painful to walk around every day, locked up for something that you know you didn’t do,” Simon told Shawn Rech, whose film about the case, “A Murder in the Park” now has an ending. It premieres at a film festival in New York on Nov. 17.
Simon, who moved to Milwaukee from Chicago in the 1980s to find work, is not granting interviews, his attorney, Terry Ekl, told me. But Ekl echoed Alvarez’s criticism of former Northwestern journalism professor David Protess, who led the Innocence Project, and the investigator on the team, Paul Ciolino.
“In my opinion, Northwestern, Protess and Ciolino framed Simon so that they could secure the release of (Anthony) Porter and make him into the poster boy for the anti-death penalty movement,” he said.
Identified by several eye witnesses, Porter was sentenced to death for the fatal shooting of Jerry Hillard and Marilyn Green at a south side Chicago park in 1982. He was just two days from a lethal chemical injection when he was freed in February 1999 following Simon’s confession.
I really hope this isn’t as bad as it looks, because it looks pretty bad.
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The investigation by the Innocence Project, she said, “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.”
I would be interested to hear the DA explain exactly where these IP investigators crossed the line of “law enforcement standards”. Because, AFAIK, actual police officers are allowed to lie to suspects all day long.
I’m a bit curious about that as well.
I found at least one answer: The MIP (allegedly) hired an actor to play a witness, which qualifies as manufacturing evidence, which police are not allowed to do to obtain a confession.
A couple possibles:
1. They cannot lie about legal consequences, and Simon says that he was promised a leniency that did not occur.
2. Police cannot lie about who they are to obtain a confession (I’d assume an exception for undercover work). The MIP investigation team may have impersonated police.