Antonio Porter will get another day in court.

The 50-year old Chicagoan has been in prison since 2003, convicted in the July 2002 death of Laymond Harrison, 28, who was fatally shot during a dice game in apparent retaliation for an earlier shooting.

Porter denied killing Harrison, and the witnesses called by prosecutors at the trial recanted their earlier statements to police, but a jury found him guilty. In 2023, Porter filed a motion seeking to have his murder conviction tossed out, arguing in part that a Chicago police officer who testified at Porter’s trial was not credible because of past misconduct allegations. A judge once ripped that officer for providing “garbage” testimony in another case, the motion states.

On Thursday, Cook County Judge Tyria Walton vacated Porter’s conviction and ordered a new trial after finding that the officer’s history of alleged misconduct “undermines the confidence of the earlier verdict rendered in Mr. Porter’s original trial.”

Cook County prosecutors now must decide whether they will attempt to try Porter again or dismiss the case. At a bond hearing Monday, Porter was ordered released on electronic monitoring pending retrial.

The Cook County state’s attorney’s office declined to comment on the case to the Tribune but issued a statement.

“The CCSAO is carefully evaluating the court’s ruling, along with the facts and circumstances of this case,” it said. “The CCSAO is committed to pursuing appropriate charges where the evidence meets legal standards in the interest of protecting public safety and seeking justice for victims.”

Porter’s attorney, Joshua Tepfer, said he doesn’t think prosecutors can prove Porter committed the murder beyond a reasonable doubt and is “through the moon” that Porter will be going home to his family while the case continues to unfold.

“To me, it’s plain as day he’s innocent,” Tepfer said.

The overturned conviction is the most recent development in a winding murder case that has seen several astonishing twists. Porter’s murder trial in 2003 featured four witnesses called by prosecutors who testified that he wasn’t the gunman, reversing prior statements to police.

No other direct testimony or evidence presented at the trial implicated Porter, but the jury nevertheless convicted him. In 2018, the state’s attorney’s office, led by Kim Foxx, rebuffed efforts by his former attorney to clear Porter, saying prosecutors believed he was properly convicted.

The Tribune wrote extensively about the case in 2018. The victim, Harrison, had been rolling dice with several other people outside James Madison Elementary in the Grand Crossing neighborhood. One of the participants, 16-year-old Vernon Andrews, later testified that the group was “drinking and smoking, sitting and gabbing.”

A man walked up and joined the game. Andrews recognized the man, whom he knew as “Black,” from the Far South Side area where his mother lived, he later said.

The new player eventually pulled out a handgun and stole everyone’s money. But, prosecutors said, the gunman let them know “that’s not the reason I’m here.”

“This is for Doogie,” the man declared, before firing nine bullets into Harrison.

“Doogie” referred to Robert Kizer, who was killed at a gas station a few blocks away in October 2001, reportedly while he was with Harrison, police said.

The man who shot Harrison at the dice game fled into a waiting car. Police gave chase, but the gunman escaped after a pursuing officer’s car engine stalled.

A witness, Giovanni Turnipseed, told police he’d watched the shooting from across the street and saw the gunman, whom he described as tall and skinny, pick up cash as he made his getaway.

Rosemary Cade, center right, holds a picture of her son, Antonio Porter, at an event for Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity (MAMAS), recognizing those who have experienced incarceration, on May 7, 2022. Cade’s son, Antonio Porter, was imprisoned at the time. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)

Police started looking for Andrews after receiving information that he knew the gunman, but investigators weren’t able to talk with him until he was taken into custody weeks later on suspicion of a battery.

Police arrested Andrews at 7 p.m. Aug. 28. Nine hours later, at 4:15 a.m., authorities took a statement from the teenager. From Andrews, police said, they learned the shooter’s nickname, Black, and put the alias into a computer database. Cross-referencing the nickname with people in Andrews’ mother’s neighborhood, police found Porter.

When police then brought in the other dice players, three men gave statements and identified photos of Porter as the gunman.

Porter told the Tribune in a 2018 prison interview that he was on his way to pick up wine for his mother’s birthday when police pulled him over in a traffic stop and he “never came home again.”

He said he didn’t know anything about the shooting and didn’t know Doogie, either. An arrest report described Porter as 235 pounds and 6 feet tall, but the Illinois Department of Corrections lists him as 5-foot-9.

With several witnesses against him, Porter was in trouble, but he took his case to trial.

Almost immediately, the case took a turn against prosecutors, who called Andrews as their first eyewitness.

Andrews testified that an officer threatened to choke him and slam him to the wall if he didn’t identify Porter as the gunman. Andrews said he was held for hours without a chance to talk to his mother.

From the witness stand, Andrews repeatedly called the statement police took from him “a lie.” He declared Porter “didn’t do it.”

He said police pressured him into identifying Porter, and he gave in so he could go home.

At one point, when the prosecutor pressed Andrews to confirm his previous account given to police, Andrews responded, “I swear to God, you all crooked.”

Other witnesses also clashed with prosecutors.

One of the dice players, Otis Burns, testified he told police in August 2002 that the gunman was a “skinny male.” In response, the detective told him the suspect had “gotten fatter,” Burns testified. Kenneth Brooks testified that Porter resembled the gunman, but “that can’t be the guy.”

Ricky Cook called Harrison his “good friend” and testified that he wanted his killer brought to justice, but testified Porter wasn’t the gunman.

In Porter’s defense, attorney Benjamin Starks called to the witness stand Turnipseed and Ronald Robinson, a dice player present at the slaying who never identified Porter. Robinson testified Porter was too short to be the gunman.

During closing arguments, prosecutor James Lynch told the jury the earlier statements taken by police have “the same weight as someone testifying in the trial before you.”

He told the jury that Andrews “doesn’t like law enforcement” and had “no desire to testify.”

“He wanted to hide the truth from you,” Lynch said.

Antonio Porter talks during an interview at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill on Feb. 27, 2018. Porter was convicted of a 2002 murder at a dice game. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune).

Starks defended Porter by saying Andrews and other witnesses were coerced into giving their statements to police.

“Now, where is the reasonable doubt? The reasonable doubt is that the people that they first got the statements from all came in here and to a man, to a man, got up and looked over and said, ‘No, I don’t see the (gunman) here,’” Starks said.

It took jurors less than 3 1/2 hours to return a guilty verdict.

Since then, Porter has continued to maintain his innocence. In 2015, prosecutors agreed to conduct DNA tests on items at the crime scene, including a pair of dice, a glass and a bottle of beer. That round proved useless in assessing Porter’s case, though, because there was limited genetic material.

Then, in 2017, prosecutors agreed to another round of testing requested by a former attorney for Porter, this time on three $5 bills left at the scene. A private lab’s testing showed Porter was excluded on all DNA results, which included the victim plus a mixture of three other unidentified individuals.

Prosecutors rejected those findings as inconclusive.

The 2023 filing from Porter’s legal team focuses on Brian Johnson, a detective on the case who, at trial, “assured the jury that Andrews’ statement in police custody was voluntary and reliable, and not the result of any threats or police misconduct,” the filing states.

Events since then have cast doubt on Johnson’s credibility, Porter’s lawyers argued. Specifically, Cook County Judge James Obbish criticized Johnson for giving “garbage” testimony in the case of Princeton Williamson, a man shot in 2014 by a Chicago police officer.

Johnson, who questioned Williamson in the hospital, later testified that Williamson was alert and didn’t appear to be in pain as he talked openly about what led to his shooting.

But two nurses gave dramatically different accounts, saying Williamson was in no condition to be interviewed because of a painful open abdominal incision that required a continuous intravenous feed of morphine.

Obbish expressed doubts that any confession was given, saying from the bench: “I have to seriously question whether Mr. Williamson ever did anything but maybe grunt or even knew who he was talking to.”

Obbish appeared particularly disturbed that Johnson never documented in his 32-page police report which doctors or nurses gave him approval to talk to Williamson, yet made it a point to detail who denied permission on another attempt.

“That’s one of the biggest pieces of garbage I ever heard from a professional member of law enforcement,” Obbish said, as previously reported by the Tribune.

Johnson has previously declined to comment.

Walton, the Cook County judge who vacated Porter’s conviction, credited Porter’s motion while issuing her ruling last week.

Of the information presented about Johnson, Walton wrote: “The evidence is of such conclusive nature that it could likely change the outcome of a new trial. May not, but it could.”

gpratt@chicagotribune.com

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/26/antonio-porter-conviction-overturned/