Porter’s vindication is not only settled law, it’s settled legendry. But not everyone buys it. Fortunately for Porter, the noisiest of those who don’t is, you might say, the wrong people. James Sotos is an attorney who for years represented Jon Burge, the former Chicago police commander at the center of the torture scandal and now in prison. Sotos holds that Protess and his students botched their investigation of the Porter case, that he’s guilty as sin, and that Alstory Simon, despite confessing to the murders and later pleading guilty to them, is in prison for crimes he didn’t commit.
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I wrote a column that found what Crawford had to say intriguing but Crawford his own worst enemy—and perhaps Simon’s as well. Failing to get the sympathetic reaction from Medill that he hoped for, he made a pest of himself and finally sent its then dean, John Lavine, an typo-filled e-mail that concluded, “My writing, has been sent everywhere: U.s. atty., Madigan, cook county state’s attorye, justice department, every editorial writer. It ain’t going away. And again, my amigo will own you and your dip shit school.”
“Our client has been robbed of his freedom for 15 years as a result of Northwestern’s unbridled fabrication of false evidence against him, the professional misconduct of a free lawyer who was supplied to Alstory by his own accusers, the failure of the CCSA’s prior administration to stand up to Northwestern and the media by investigating the fabricated evidence against Alstory, and the refusal of the courts to take seriously the compelling evidence of Alstory’s innocence and Porter’s guilt. . . . Justice requires that the shameful charade be exposed and concluded.”
“Does Sotos seriously believe that my journalism students, a private investigator and a defense attorney actively collaborated with Cook County prosecutors and the Chief Judge to railroad an innocent man?” Protess asked. “Does that sound rational? Yeah, if you believe the Earth is flat or God created humans 5,000 years ago.”
