In reply, Ekl’s lawyers argued such a position would render time limits on defamation claims meaningless, allowing “incredibly stale claims” to be turned into potentially ruinous lawsuits, many years in the future.Įkl’s claims were upheld by Cook County Judge Christopher Lawler, who dismissed Ciolino’s lawsuit for arriving four years too late. They claim the one-year statute of limitations expired in 2015, one year after the film debuted in New York.Ĭiolino’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, of Chicago, however, argued Ciolino should be allowed to continue his action under the so-called “discovery rule,” which has allowed certain plaintiffs to sidestep the one-year time limit by arguing they were not aware of alleged defamatory statements or published media, until after the one-year limit had expired.īonjean argued that the one-year time limit should no longer apply in a world in which the internet and all of its varied publishing platforms, means people could go years before they become aware of an obscure defamatory blog or social media post, or a documentary film initially released to a limited audience far from where they live. That counterclaim was dismissed in 2017, and Ciolino followed with his lawsuit in Cook County court.Īttorneys for Ekl sought to have the 2018 lawsuit canned, asserting Ciolino waited too long to bring his action. In his counterclaim, Ciolino also asserted defamation and conspiracy claims against Ekl and others. That action, however, followed a counterclaim he had filed as part of the legal action launched by Simon in federal court against Ciolino and others for their parts in the case.
The film was later also shown on cable network, Showtime.Ĭiolino filed a defamation suit in Cook County Circuit Court in 2018, demanding $25 million in damages. However, Ciolino said he did not become aware of the documentary’s existence until at least one year later, when it was screened in Chicago and Cleveland. Hale’s documentary was first screened at a film festival in New York in 2014. Simon was later cleared of the murder charges in 2013, after Ciolino and Protess were themselves accused of framing him. Porter’s exoneration later was used to persuade Illinois state officials to ban the death penalty in the state. The documentary casts aspersions on the work by Ciolino and David Protess, a Northwestern University journalism professor, to secure the exoneration of Anthony Porter, by allegedly coercing Simon into confessing to the crimes that Porter for which Porter had been earlier convicted. Ekl, an attorney who represented Simon, is among those whose comments are featured in the film. Hale and Whole Truth Films produced “Murder in the Park,” a documentary discussing the effort to convict Alstory Simon of a 1983 double homicide on Chicago’s southeast side. On March 18, the state high court ruled investigator Paul Ciolino didn’t wait too long to file his defamation lawsuit against filmmaker Andrew Hale Hale’s company, Whole Truth Films and Chicago attorney Terry Ekl. of framing one man to get another man off death row.
The Illinois Supreme Court has cleared a private investigator at the center of one Chicago’s most famous wrongful murder conviction cases to continue with his defamation lawsuit against those involved with a documentary film that accused the P.I.
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