The death row inmate left the Cook County Jail on Feb. 5, 1999, a free man for the first time in roughly 16 years after narrowly escaping execution by lethal injection.
Anthony Porter had already been fitted for a suit to be worn in his coffin. Convicted and sentenced to death for the fatal shooting of a teenage couple in Washington Park in 1982, the Chicago resident was granted a stay by the Illinois Supreme Court about 48 hours before he was scheduled to be put to death.
Porter was later granted a pardon based on innocence, a high-profile exoneration that shed light on many problems with the death penalty system and paved the way for Illinois to abolish capital punishment in 2011.
But the case proved more complicated over the years: Another man confessed, recanted and that conviction was also tossed, culminating with allegations that a local journalism professor and university students used unethical tactics and practices while investigating the double homicide.
To this day, justice still hasn’t been served in the 1982 Washington Park shooting, despite two convictions in the case.
Twenty-five years after the dramatic freeing of Porter, executions in the United States have been on an uptick for the past several years, although nowhere near as prevalent as they had been historically.
Last year, 24 people were executed nationwide, compared to 18 in 2022 and 11 in 2021, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center, a criminal justice nonprofit based in Washington D.C. In 1999, the year Porter was released from custody, 98 executions had occurred across the country, the most of any year since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report. Two of the executions in 1999 were carried out in Illinois.
A few days ago, a first-of-its-kind execution in Alabama that pioneered the use of nitrogen gas in state-sanctioned capital punishment has revived debate over the death penalty, which emerged as a campaign issue in the 2024 presidential race.
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has repeatedly called for expanding the death penalty — including urging mandatory capital punishment for drug dealers, though it’s unclear if lawmakers would be willing to pass such a measure or if it could withstand legal challenges.
“We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” Trump said during his 2024 presidential campaign announcement, as the crowd cheered. “Because it’s the only way.”
The Trump administration had resumed federal executions in 2020, after a 17-year pause, and oversaw more executions than any other president in more than 120 years, according to the Associated Press.
Just five days before Joe Biden’s inauguration, Trump’s administration carried out the 13th and final federal execution of his term in office. Dustin Higgs, convicted for his role in the kidnapping and killing of three women in Maryland in 1996, was put to death by lethal injection on Jan. 16, 2021, at a prison death chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana.
While the Justice Department imposed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021 under the Biden administration, they could be revived in the future.
Biden, the first sitting president to openly oppose the death penalty and urge its abolition, had vowed during his first run for office to work to abolish the federal death penalty; yet with less than a year left in his term, some critics say he hasn’t fulfilled that pledge.
“Since 1973, over 160 individuals in this country have been sentenced to death and were later exonerated,” Biden posted on Twitter, the social media site now known as X, while campaigning in 2019. “Because we can’t ensure that we get these cases right every time, we must eliminate the death penalty.”
Amnesty International, an organization opposed to the death penalty, has pressed Biden to commute current federal death sentences, citing the execution spree under Trump.
“Today, the USA continues its attachment to the death penalty, even as the list of countries that have abandoned it has grown year by year, and even though international law requires abolition within a reasonable timeframe,” Amnesty International said in a 2022 report. “In line with his abolitionist promise, and pending legislation to end the death penalty altogether, President Biden must now commute all federal death sentences.”
‘Remember the victims’
On Aug. 15, 1982, 19-year-old Marilyn Green and her fiancé, 18-year-old Jerry Hillard, were shot to death at in the bleacher section of a swimming pool in Washington Park, the Tribune reported. Porter was convicted in the fatal shooting and sentenced to death in 1983.
Just two days before Porter was to be executed, his lawyers successfully argued he wasn’t mentally fit, claiming his IQ was too low. During this reprieve, the case was reinvestigated by then-Northwestern University star journalism professor David Protess, a group of Northwestern students and a private investigator.
A key witness for the prosecution against Porter recanted his story. An estranged wife of a man named Alstory Simon said she had been at the scene of the crime and Simon was actually the gunman; Simon confessed on video to the private investigator.
Former Chicago Tribune reporter and Pulitzer Prize-winner Maurice Possley recalled Porter’s release from custody.
“It was kind of an astonishing day in a lot of respects, but mostly because of how close he had come to being executed,” said Possley, now a senior researcher at the National Registry of Exonerations, which collects and disseminates information about criminal defendant exonerations. “Perhaps behind the scenes that day, the most significant reaction was that of George Ryan, who was the governor.”
The Republican leader of Illinois had once supported the death penalty. But Porter’s case became a catalyst in changing Ryan’s views — and pivotal to the state’s eventual abolition of the death penalty, said Possley, who co-authored Ryan’s memoir “Until I Could Be Sure: How I Stopped the Death Penalty in Illinois.”
Shaken by the prospect of Porter coming so close to death, Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in January 2000.
“I cannot support a system, which, in its administration, has proven to be so fraught with error and has come so close to the ultimate nightmare, the state’s taking of innocent life,” Ryan said, noting that there had been 13 wrongful death row convictions in Illinois by that point. “How do you prevent another Anthony Porter — another innocent man or woman from paying the ultimate penalty for a crime he or she did not commit?”
Death penalty expert Michael Radelet recalled that the governor convened a commission to analyze the use of capital punishment. Radelet co-authored a study of Illinois executions for the commission that showed the death penalty was more likely to be imposed if the victims were white or if the crime occurred in a rural area. The study was published in the Oregon Law Review.
In January 2003, Ryan announced that he was commuting all 167 of the state’s death row inmates.
“It was absolutely unbelievable,” recalled Radelet, now an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder, who was in the crowd during Ryan’s speech. “That was a key moment in the trend toward abolition in the United States.”
Ryan, who didn’t seek reelection, was convicted of multiple felony corruption charges in 2006 and served more than five years in prison. A federal investigation had revealed a licenses-for-bribes scheme inside the secretary of state’s office under Ryan.
In 2011, Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation abolishing the death penalty statewide, announcing moments afterward that “it is impossible to create a perfect system, free of all mistakes.”
About a decade later, Porter died at the age 66 of “anoxic brain injury due to probable opioid toxicity,” which was ruled an accident by the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Every so often, there’s a new push to reinstate the death penalty in Illinois, but with little traction.
Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2018 proposed restoring capital punishment for mass murderers and killers of law enforcement officers, but lawmakers never acted on the plan.
“Gun violence has rocked the nation and our state,” Rauner said at the time. “This is a responsible, bipartisan approach to the problem that will help ensure the safety and security of our children, our peacekeepers, our families, and our communities in Illinois.”
In February 2023, state Rep. John Cabello, a Machesney Park Republican, introduced legislation to restore the death penalty in certain circumstances, including the killing of a child under 12, a first responder or the killing of two or more people, as well as those convicted of terrorist attacks.
While Cabello doesn’t believe this measure or any other to restore the death penalty “will ever go anywhere, not under Democrat rule” in Illinois, he said he will continue pressing for the return of capital punishment for the most heinous crimes.
“Unfortunately, in this state we do a lot of things to help criminals,” he said. “And we never remember the victims and the victims’ families. And we must start doing that.”
No resolution
For about 15 years, Simon was in prison for the slaying of Green and the voluntary manslaughter of Hillard.
Then came a bombshell report in 2014 from the office of then-State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, accusing Northwestern’s Protess, the investigator and the university students of unethical conduct during their investigation. They have denied wrongdoing in the past; Protess — who is no longer employed by Northwestern — did not return Tribune requests for comment for this story.
Simon sued Northwestern, Protess and the investigator, though the investigator had been voluntarily dismissed from the case; that lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount in 2018. Northwestern released a statement at the time saying the university was pleased with the settlement and had admitted no wrongdoing.
Prosecutors in 2014 threw out Simon’s murder and manslaughter convictions in the case and he was released from prison.
“At the end of the day, and in the best interests of justice, we can reach no other conclusion but that the investigation of this case has been so deeply corroded and corrupted that we can no longer maintain the legitimacy of this conviction,” Alvarez said at a news conference in 2014.
A Tribune editorial at the time acknowledged the frustration of the second tossed conviction — but argued this only strengthened the need for death penalty abolition.
“That’s a hugely unsatisfying outcome, but it only underscores our belief that the death penalty has no place in a just society,” the editorial concluded. “We do know that two men spent many years in prison for the murders, and that at least one of them was wrongfully convicted. We should all be grateful that there wasn’t a wrongful execution as well.”
Today, capital punishment is prohibited in nearly half of all states, and several others have a moratorium on executions; five states carried out executions in 2023, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Capital punishment seems to be less popular with the American public now compared to the turn of the 21st Century: A Gallup poll released in November found that half all Americans believe the death penalty is applied unfairly, a record high number since Gallup began asking the question in 2000; only 47% of respondents said capital punishment is applied fairly, compared to 61% in 2005, the year that question received the most agreement.
The most recent execution was on Jan. 25, when Kenneth Eugene Smith became the first inmate ever known to be put to death by nitrogen hypoxia. Republican Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall praised the process, saying that nitrogen is now a “proven” execution method, and offered to help other states interested following suit.
“Alabama has achieved something historic….” he said in a statement on the execution of Smith, who was convicted of a 1988 murder-for-hire slaying. “Despite the international effort by activists to undermine and disparage our state’s justice system and to deny justice to the victims of heinous murders, our proven method offers a blueprint for other states and a warning to those who would contemplate shedding innocent blood.”
Yet observers described watching Smith shake and convulse for moments during the execution, which took 22 minutes, according to the Associated Press. A United Nations panel of experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council raised alarm last week, calling the use of a previously untested execution method “nothing short of state-sanctioned torture.”
“The gruesome execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith is a stark reminder of the barbaric nature of the death penalty,” the experts said in a statement, “and a powerful moment to intensify calls for its abolition in the United States of America and the rest of the world.”
The Associated Press contributed.