Exonerated Death Row Inmate Going Back To Prison For Stealing Deodorant
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A Chicago man who spent years in prison on a wrongful murder conviction is headed back behind bars.
As WBBM Newsradio's Dave Berner reports, Anthony Porter was on Death Row for 17 years, for the murder of a teenage couple in Chicago in 1982.
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He was released in 1999, after Northwestern University professor David Protess and his students investigated the class as part of the Medill Innocence Project, and obtained a confession by another man.
But Porter is in trouble again, and is going back to prison for one year. He pleaded guilty on Tuesday to retail theft for stealing a stick of deodorant from a Walgreens drugstore on the city's South Side.
Porter was charged in September 2011. He was given credit for 60 days served in Cook County Jail and will be under supervision for one year when released, according to Cook County State's Attorney's office spokeswoman Tandra Simonton.
Porter was originally convicted of the August 1982 murders of Marilyn Green, 19, and her fiancé, Jerry Hillard, 18, in a swimming pool near Washington Park, and sentenced to death.
But the Northwestern students discovered major flaws in the prosecution. Meanwhile, in an interview with a student, William Taylor – the man who implicated Porter – recanted his statement and said he had been threatened and intimidated by police.
In 1999, Porter was released and exonerated and another man, Alstory Simon, was charged with the murders. Simon was later convicted of the murders and sentenced to 37 1/2 years in prison.
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