Oh, What a Tangled Webb

September 7, 2019
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Dan Webb’s Appointment as Special Prosecutor in Smollett Case Should Generate Angst among Chicago Citizens

Many Chicagoans are wondering what the appointment of Dan Webb as the special prosecutor in the Jussie Smollett case means for the criminal justice system in Chicago, particularly its controversial prosecutor, Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx.

Tribune columnist John Kass gave voice to the anxiety over Webb’s appointment in a recent article:

If Webb only focuses on Smollett’s cheesy dramatics, it would be a moral crime and a whitewash. If the great lawyer nearing the end of his career cares about his own legacy, he must focus on Foxx and tell the public exactly what happened.

Kass is right, but his column ignores Webb’s role in other criminal cases that should intensify that suspicion about his selection as special prosecutor.

Webb represented former governor George Ryan in Ryan’s 2005 criminal trial on corruption charges. According to news reports, Webb represented Ryan pro bono, and though Webb lost the case, his connection to Ryan is troubling in and of itself.

The reason is that in 2003, Ryan pardoned four men who were on death row—Aaron Patterson, Madison Hobley, Leroy Orange, and Stanley Howard. Ryan’s decision to let these four convicted killers walk out of prison was a milestone in American politics, for it marked the first time a sitting governor pardoned men of murder convictions with no new evidence of their innocence.

That’s right. Despite the investigation by detectives, the work of prosecutors, the review of judges, the verdict of juries, and the approval of appeals courts, Ryan tossed the convictions aside as if they were little more than annoying paperwork. And Ryan did this at the same time he was being accused of the corruption that would eventually send him to prison.

In a chilling 2003 speech, Ryan cited the 1999 exoneration of Anthony Porter for a 1982 double murder as justification for his decision. Porter had been exonerated through an “investigation” by former Northwestern University professor David Protess and his students, who claimed that detectives framed Porter for the murders. Another man, Alstory Simon, they claimed, actually committed the killings. These Northwestern “investigators” obtained a confession from Simon, who replaced Porter in prison.

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In the years since Ryan initiated the bloodletting of the public coffers through civil lawsuits that began with the pardoning of these four men, a steady flow of evidence has emerged that the movement to exonerate convicted killers is rife with corruption, none more so than the Porter exoneration. In 2014, then Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez released Simon from prison after a year-long investigation of his confession. She assailed the Northwestern investigation, saying that Simon’s constitutional rights had been violated. Surrounding the Porter debacle was the role of Chicago journalism, particularly the Chicago Tribune, who championed Porter’s exoneration with coverage bordering on the hysterical. (Small wonder Kass does not want to mention this sorry chapter of Illinois corruption in his columns.)

In the wake of this evidence that Porter was not, in fact, innocent of the double murders and that an innocent man had been framed for them, Ryan’s speech letting the four men off death row in light of the Porter exoneration now becomes as much a chilling testimony to the dark world of Chicago and Illinois politics as it does anything resembling social justice:

As Ryan put it:

I watched in surprise as freed death row inmate Anthony Porter was released from jail. A free man, he ran into the arms of Northwestern University Professor Dave Protess who poured his heart and soul into proving Porter’s innocence with his journalism students. He was 48 hours away from being wheeled into the execution chamber where the state would kill him. It would all be so antiseptic and most of us would not have even paused, except that Anthony Porter was innocent of the double murder for which he had been condemned to die. After Mr. Porter's case there was the report by Chicago Tribune reporters Steve Mills and Ken Armstrong documenting the systemic failures of our capital punishment system.

As it was, Ryan’s decision initiated what very well could be deemed the modern era of Illinois and Chicago politics, for it gave rise to the anti-police movement and its tactics in one fell swoop. The four men who walked from death row filed their obligatory multimillion-dollar lawsuits that were settled and paid for by the citizens of Chicago, going from vicious killers to folk heroes, while the Chicago detectives who put them in prison were now transformed into criminals by the fawning, corrupt media machine that also joined forces with the anti-police movement.

The only wrench that was thrown in the era of suing police officers that Ryan initiated was the decision by Anita Alvarez to let Simon out of prison and attack the tactics of the Northwestern investigators in getting him to confess. This was a pivotal moment, a major step in restoring the justice to Chicago’s criminal justice system, at the same time potentially restoring some faith that the careers and reputations of police officers wouldn’t be sacrificed at the altar of the extremist anti-police movement.

The actions by Alvarez therefore initiated an intense campaign to remove her from office among the far-left activists in the city and impose a prosecutor who would toe the progressive party line by continuing to release convicted killers and push the police corruption narrative.

Foxx delivered, heavily supported in her campaigned by the likes of George Soros and law firms that specialize in suing the police for wrongful convictions. As soon as she got into office, she began releasing convicted killers like Gabriel Solache and Arturo Reyes, both of whom Alvarez had maintained were guilty and whose convictions contained no assertions involving police misconduct.

So, the appointment of a special prosecutor who represented Ryan, pro bono, is troubling. Isn’t the possibility that Foxx’s decisions in the Smollett case are part of a pattern of her making decisions that benefit her ideological and political allies at the expense of evidence and equal application of the law? Wouldn’t ignoring this evidence of a larger pattern in Foxx’s administration be exactly the kind of whitewash Kass is warning his readers about?

Webb has an historic opportunity to uncover a large world of potential injustice in Chicago, but what are the chances he will do so given the fact that he represented the man who may very well have initiated this injustice?

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