Page 12 - August 2017

Accused Professor tied to Englewood Four case: Wrongful conviction or wrongful exoneration?
Perhaps in no city other than Chicago could the impending multimillion-dollar settle- ment with a band of exonerated killers known as the Englewood Four be met with such yawn-inducing scrutiny by the local media and the political establishment.
This absence of scrutiny by the powers that be is disturbing. The reason is that there now exists a compelling and growing body of ev-
idence suggesting that the “Wrongful Conviction Move- ment,” as it is known throughout the country, may have been responsible — intentionally or unintentionally — for the “Wrongful Exoneration” of convicted defendants in a gruesome string of high-profile cases going back de- cades.
One of the most recent wrongful conviction cases to land in Chicago, by way of the Dirksen Federal Court Building, is that of the so-called Englewood Four: Ter- rill Swift, Michael Saunders, Vincent Thanes and Harold Richardson. The four defendants — teenagers at the time — were convicted of the 1994 rape and murder of Nina Glover, 30, a prostitute whose strangled body was found in a trash bin behind a liquor store in Chicago’s Engle- wood neighborhood on the South Side.
The four were convicted and had spent 16 years in prison when new DNA evidence suggested that another individual, now deceased, may have been the real killer. The four were released in 2011 and soon filed suit for their wrongful incarceration.
(The County recently settled Terrill Swift’s lawsuit in May for $5.6 million, and the bet is that the City, on the recommendation of the Corporation Counsel’s Office, will also settle with the three remaining defendants.)
The centerpiece of the misconduct allegations in the wrongful conviction movement lies with former North- western University journalism professor David Protess. In 1999, Protess and his fellow Northwestern student sleuths had gathered what they claimed was evidence that An- thony Porter, on death row for a 1982 double murder, was innocent, and that another man, Alstory Simon, had committed the murders. The Northwestern investigation led to obtaining a confession from Simon, allowing Porter to go free. Simon replaced Porter in prison.
The Anthony Porter exoneration is now the subject of a massive federal lawsuit in which attorneys representing Alstory Simon allege Protess framed Simon. The attorneys also allege a pattern of misconduct by Protess going back decades. Eyewitnesses at the time and to this day place
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Porter, not Simon, at the scene of the murder.
Simon, who was released from prison in 2014 by then Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez after serving 15 years for Porter’s crimes, is now suing Northwestern University, Protess and a private detective for $40 million
in Cook County Federal Court.
So what do Northwestern, Protess and the Porter case
have to do with the Englewood Four?
A lot, actually.
Consider for a moment the testimony of Terrill Swift. At
the time, Swift was taken into custody in 1994, and until his trial three years later, Swift testified that he had been treated well by investigating detectives.
From the May 1998 trial testimony of Swift:
Q: Were you mistreated by the police in any way?
A: I wasn’t mistreated at all.
Q: Did they beat you up or anything?
A: No, sir.
Q: Did they verbally threaten you?
A: No, sir.
Q: Were they pretty nice to you?
A: Yes, sir.
By 2014, however, Swift’s responses to similar inquires had changed dramatically. Here are excerpts from his deposition.
...and that’s where various officers, like one at a time, they’ll come in there and say, “Why did you beat this wom- an?” Another one would come in and say, “Why did you guys strangle her?” Then another one would come in and say, “for that little bit of amount of money, you guys did this? Why did you, Mo-Mike, and all of the co-defendants; why did you guys throw her in the garbage? I’m like, “what?” I’m in a room. It’s dark. I’m – I’m crying. I don’t know. I don’t understand. I’m, like, “What? What do you mean?” And I had more threats. I had more threats at that point.
So what was it? What happened between Swift’s trial and his 2014 deposition that caused him to change his story about how the detectives treated him?
Well, one thing that happened was the Protess- engineered 1999 Anthony Porter exoneration. In the same deposition, Swift, himself sitting in prison, describes a pivotal moment in 1999 as he watched Porter walk out of death row:
Q. With respect to the post-conviction proceedings and the work that was done in an effort to get your con- viction overturned, do you remember when it was that you first engaged the lawyers at Northwestern to work on your behalf?
MARTIN PREIB
SecondVice President’s Report