"It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble, it's what we know for a fact that just ain't so."

One of the things everybody in the death penalty debate knows for a fact is that Anthony Porter of Chicago was an innocent man, wrongly convicted, and sentenced to death. Everybody knows that he was saved at the eleventh hour because idealistic young journalism students uncovered in a class project the truth that had eluded professionals of both sides in the original investigation and trial. Until today, I believed that myself, never having heard it challenged.

Today at the conference of the Association of Government Attorneys in Capital Litigation, I heard a talk by James Sotos, who now represents the man "everyone knows" is the real killer, Alstory Simon. Turns out the students had almost nothing to do with getting Simon's confession to the crime. That videotaped confession was obtained by a seasoned private investigator using tactics that, if a police officer had used them, would have the defense bar screaming with outrage.

Why did Simon subsequently plead guilty? He did it on the advice of the attorney arranged for him, according to Sotos, by the same investigator who obtained that confession.

Of course, Sotos is an advocate, and an advocate's job is to present the facts in the way most favorable to his client. So I won't endorse his version of the story without looking into it further. But there appears to be a substantial chance that the anti-side's number one poster boy of exoneration really did it. Given how many other cases of "exoneration" have turned out to be cases of guilty murderers walking, that would not be surprising.