A Murder in the Park

A Murder in the Park

“A Murder in the Park” by Shawn Rech and Brandon Kimber is not only an interesting true crime story but also a film that demonstrates that some cherished liberal beliefs are not always true; they are sometimes the opposite of what actually happened.

In this case, those beliefs pertain to the innocence of black criminals convicted for serious crimes, police corruption investigating these cases, and journalists’ sagacity in championing reputed victims of the criminal justice system.

This documentary turns these views upside down. Here, crusading liberal reporters are either incredibly stupid or extremely corrupt or both. The cops are innocent scapegoats for media lies while the bad guy is really a bad guy.

The movie begins with a scene so good it couldn’t possibly be true and indeed isn’t. A few years after midnight on a sweltering night at a Chicago public pool in 1982, Anthony Porter, an African-American man sentenced to death for killing another African-American couple there, is released from prison when he should have been executed (the jailers had asked him what he wanted for his last meal). He runs through the prison gates into the arms of his last-minute saviors: Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess and his students who found evidence that somebody else did it.

Porter’s release after 17 years in 1999 fit perfectly with current events at the time involving media exposes about corruption among police officers who falsify investigations leading to coerced confessions followed by judges doing dirty work on behalf of powerful politicians during election campaigns where they’re supported by bribes from drug dealers you get the idea. Newspapers all over Chicago were printing stories like that every day. So another one was published: Innocent man almost killed! Death penalty ends!

Except we find out within minutes: Subsequent investigation showed conclusively that Porter was guilty as charged and found guilty again based on claims later shown false made up out of thin air by Protess and his students that wound up getting another innocent man convicted of murder besides the one Porter committed.

Then it goes back to 1982 to show how the murders were originally discovered. It was a hot August night when Jerry Hillard and Marilyn Green were sitting in the bleachers at that public pool, and somebody came up and shot them each five times at close range, then ran away. Anthony Porter was stopped by a cop leaving the scene but wasn’t held because he didn’t have a gun.

Before long police found four witnesses two pairs of young male friends. All had been at or near the pool. All said they saw Porter with another guy sitting on the bleachers near where Hillard and Green were killed. All knew him from around; they describe him as vicious, violent, scary. When they heard the shots that killed Green, they looked up and saw Porter shoot Hillard in the face with his pistol, then run off.

The account of the investigation which followed the interviews conducted with witnesses and police who worked the case is genuinely impressive in its depiction of the care and thoroughness that good cops bring to their work. Airtight case, he should be in prison.

But seventeen years later, when Prof. Protess and his students came looking for people to exonerate, Porter was only too happy big surprise to claim he hadn’t done it. He said from prison that the murders had been committed by one Alstory Simon, a friend of Green and Hillard’s who’d been with them earlier in the evening.

They produced evidence showing that the witnesses couldn’t have seen the crime from where they were. The problems being that nobody knew where they were actually committed, and the visual obstructions they pointed toward didn’t exist in 1982. They also didn’t bother interviewing most of those witnesses; one was pressured into recanting his testimony.

More tactics: Protess’ investigator Paul Ciolino even posed as producer Jerry Bruckheimer in promising someone a movie deal if he gave them what they wanted. Simon’s embittered ex-wife was induced to accuse him (testimony we hear her recant on her deathbed). And finally: After three days spent smoking crack cocaine, Ciolino and a cohort burst into Simon’s apartment late at night and badger him into making a false confession that will send him to prison after Porter has already gone free.

This tale of political correctness run amok contains some deeply unlikable characters, none more so than one professor who taught at one of this nation’s most prestigious journalism schools for 30 years. This teacher of “advocacy, not journalism,” as one person describes it, comes across as an upper-crust sleazebag straight out of central casting if you’re casting against type for some conservative columnist’s nightmares.

No doubt “A Murder in the Park” presents only one side of the cultural coin, as it were. It should perhaps be shown on double bills with Ken Burns’ superb “The Central Park Five,” which presents another. But this much is certain: It deserves to be seen at every journalism school in the country.

Watch A Murder in the Park For Free On Gomovies.