'Innocence fraud' demands prosecutor vigilance.

• Author: Collins, John M., Jr.

AFTER STUDYING OVERTURNED CONVICTIONS for about 10 years (1), I think it's clear that exonerations can be the result of fraud or misconduct on the part of post-conviction activists and litigators. (2) How frequently it happens can only be speculated, but recent events in Illinois and North Carohna should serve as a warning that some self-proclaimed righters of wrong will resort to shady tactics to secure the freedom of previously convicted felons.

ALSTORY SIMON--ILLINOIS

Anthony Porter was convicted and sentenced to death in 1983 for killing a young, recently engaged couple in a park on Chicago's south side. (3) Experts opined that Porter had an IQ of 51, which added to the perceived cruelty of his impending death some 16 years later. (4) It was then, however, that innocence activists from Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions sought to win Porter's freedom by descending upon a young man named Alstory Simon who suddenly and unexpectedly found himself being accused of the murders and pressured to confess to the crimes. (5)

Simon was an unfortunate soul, a local wanderer from the area where the murders happened. He was known to use crack cocaine, a troubled past that made him easy prey for an ambitious professor, David Protess and a rogue investigator named Paul Ciolino. Ciolino reportedly deceived and manipulated Simon into believing that police had considerable evidence against him, and that his confession would likely spare him from the death penalty. That Ciolino threatened Simon with the possibility of death and promised him money through possible movie or book deals were the least of his professional transgressions.

According to news reports, Ciolino hired an actor to play a witness who, on video, accused Simon of committing the murders for which Anthony Porter was previously convicted and sentenced to die. Simon, to his dismay, was shown the video and believed that his accuser was an actual witness. (6)

Simon confessed. Porter was released from prison. The death penalty in Illinois was essentially abolished. Simon was formally convicted in 1999 and spent over 15 years in prison, but a determined investigative journalist named Bill Crawford pestered authorities to look seriously at Simon's conviction and the manner in which it was secured. (7) He was released from prison early this year when it became clear that Simon was a likely victim of innocence fraud. Simon filed a $40 million suit in U.S. District Court for a conspiracy "to frame Simon for the double murder." (8)

David Protess, a prolific innocence activist who now serves as president for the Chicago Innocence Project (9), has a troubled history of his own. Protess retired from Northwestern in 2011 after internal investigations alleged he misled witnesses and repeatedly gave false information to attorneys at the University. (10)

The nightmare that became Alstory Simon's confession and conviction is evidence of a serious threat posed by some post-conviction activists and litigators who believe that the ends justify the means. In examining past convictions, the passage of time, faded memories, and the bullying of witnesses and alternative suspects provide a foundation upon which a believable innocence narrative can be constructed. Furthermore, in all too many post-conviction investigations, persons of interest are vulnerable to being abused and manipulated into recanting testimony or confessing to crimes they didn't commit. Some struggle through daily life in unfortunate socioeconomic conditions with little money or education. Some are in prison for other crimes. Their personal circumstances create considerable limitations that prevent them from pushing back against activists whose zeal for producing exonerations sometimes borders on desperation.

According to the Innocence Project in Manhattan, "more than 1 out of 4 people wrongfully convicted but later exonerated by DNA evidence made a false confession or incriminating statement." (11) In my own career as a...