Socialist Action /April 1999
Commentary by Mumia Abu-jamal
An 'Impartial' Killing
"The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine."
-Alexander Pope (1688-1714),
"The Rape of the Lock" (1712)
The dog days of August 1982 drew several people to the pools in Chicago's
Washington Park, strangers who would meet and be thereafter linked for life.
Among them, Marilyn Green and Jerry Hillard, who would be shot to death,
after being robbed.
Also, Henry Williams and William Taylor-two men who would give incriminating
statements and testify against a man named Anthony Porter, who would be
arrested based on these statements and on the testimony of a cop named Anthony
Liance, who swore Porter was the man he stopped, frisked, and released at
the crime scene shortly after the killings, as the man was unarmed.
Porter would be tried by a jury with at least one member who attended
church with the mother of a victim (who told her fellows on the panel that
deliberation wasn't necessary, "as far as she was concerned, they could
vote guilty right then").
This jury would convict of two counts of murder, two counts of armed
robbery and unlawful restraint against witness Henry Williams, and two counts
of unlawful weapons use. Porter would be sentenced to 30 years for the robbery
and unlawful restraint charges, and to death.
He filed appeals to every court that he could, and was rejected by every
one.
When Porter complained of the juror, the Illinois Supreme Court found
such a relationship was not prejudicial, and "mere suspicion of bias
or prejudice" was "not sufficient" to reverse the verdict
[from State v. Porter, 111 ni. 2nd 386,405 (1986)]. The Court majority neatly
affirmed Porter's "convictions and sentences" thusly:
"The clerk of this court is directed to enter an order setting Wednesday,
May 21,1986, on which the sentence of death, entered in the circuit court
of Cook County, is to be carried out (pp. 406-7)."
After several stays, Porter came within two days of death when the court
granted a stay to examine his mental competency, occasioned by his low I.Q.
But, the issue wasn't his incompetence but his innocence, which was determined
not by his defense lawyers, not by the state or federal judiciary, certainly
not by the prosecutors, but by several young people, students of Northwestern
University's journalism class. They solved the case in four months!
After almost 17 years on Death Row, Porter walked away from the executioner,
after another man explained on tape how he killed the two swimmers in a
drug deal gone sour.
Late last December one of the witnesses, Taylor, told N.U. students that
the cops "threatened, harassed and intimidated" him into testifying,
and reiterated his original statement to cops on the crime scene that he
didn't see Porter kill anyone.
Ah, what of the actual killer?
The cops interviewed him the day after the killings, and tried to get
him and his wife (who witnessed) to give testimony against the guy they
had already fingered-Anthony Porter. Alstory Simon sat and listened as they
tried to convince him Porter killed two people that Simon had killed, and
looked at mug shots of their key suspect, and promptly fled the state.
Porter's appeal, opposed by the then-state's attorney (now Chicago Mayor)
Richard Daley, was little more than an empty formality. Had the D.A., state's
attorney, county judge R.L. Sklovowski, Illinois Supreme Court, or Chicago
police had their way, Porter would've been dead today-years before his innocence
was proven.
But Anthony Porter, like most on Death Row, was poor, and that is the
quality of legal representation he got-poor. That factor, joined with police
passion to convince witnesses they had the right guy, and the blind ambition
of prosecutors and judges to use Porter like a political stepping stone,
all but insured his condemnation to Death Row, and his remaining there.
He got exactly the same kind of "fair trial" that hundreds
get every day, and will get tomorrow. And the same "appeal."
The system doesn't work. It wasn't designed to. It was designed to look
like it does. It sucked almost 17 years of LIFE from an innocent man, whose
alibi was treated like the cruel, cold, heartless joke of a Constitution.
That is, glanced at, spoken of, and ultimately ignored.
Socialist Action /April 1999 |