The description of the investigation that followed, which includes interviews with the witnesses and the police who worked the case, can’t help but impress viewers with the care and scrupulousness that good cops put into their work. The case against Porter was airtight, his conviction deserved.
Seventeen years later, though, when Prof. Protess and his students went looking for convicts to exonerate, Porter was happy – big surprise – to claim innocence. From prison, he put out the story that the murders were actually committed by one Alstory Simon, a friend of Green and Hillard’s who had been with them earlier in the evening.
The students turned in evidence showing that the witnesses couldn’t have seen the crime from where they were. Only problems were, the kids didn’t know where the murders were actually committed, and the visual obstructions they pointed to weren’t there in 1982. The students also didn’t bother interviewing most of the witnesses. The one who was approached was pressured into recanting his testimony.
Similar tactics followed. Protess’ investigator, Paul Ciolino, even posed as producer Jerry Bruckheimer in promising one person a movie deal in exchange for the desired testimony. Simon’s embittered ex-wife was induced to accuse him of the crime (testimony we see her recant on her deathbed). And finally the corker: Ciolino and a cohort burst in on Simon one night after he’s been doing crack cocaine for three days and browbeat him into making the false confession that sends him to prison after Porter’s release.
This tale of political correctness run amok contains some truly unsavory characters, but none more so than a certain professor who was on the faculty of one of nation’s most prestigious journalism schools for 30 years. This teacher of “advocacy, not journalism,” as one person puts it, comes across as an upper-crust sleazebag sprung straight from some conservative columnist’s nightmares.
No doubt “A Murder in the Park” presents only one side of the cultural coin, as it were. Perhaps it should be shown on double bills with Ken Burns’ superb “The Central Park Five,” which shows the other side. But one thing is certain: it demands to be screened in every journalism school in the country.
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