LaGuer was indicted in August 1983 after the lead detective made blatantly false statements to the grand jury, including that the victim identified LaGuer by name.
Private investigators identified a “likelier suspect” who was five years older than LaGuer with a similar build, complexion and ethnicity. His mother had lived in the building where the crime occurred and, most significantly, he had a history of sexual misconduct. Even though police were made aware of this man, they never interviewed him. In 1998, he was charged with another rape.
The list of things pointing to LaGuer’s innocence is long. His attorney, who counted on LaGuer taking a plea bargain under which he could have walked free after two years, was ill prepared for a trial marred by jurors uttering racist slurs about LaGuer during deliberations and, as it turns out, suppressed evidence. The all-white male jury convicted LaGuer based only on the victim, who unbeknownst to the panel had a history of mental illness, pointing to him in the courtroom.
By the 1990s LaGuer’s claims of innocence and the gaping holes in the case against him were widely reported in the press. The long list of prominent people speaking and writing in his support included Elie Wiesel, William Styron, Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Boston Globe editorial page, and John Silber. While fighting his conviction, LaGuer explored the world of ideas Boston University’s prison education program was exposing him to. He was a model prisoner, teaching AIDS awareness to other inmates, winning writing awards, and earning a bachelor’s degree with honors.
That the parole board, in 1998, refused to acknowledge either the weakness of the original case or LaGuer’s achievements as an inmate incensed his many supporters. With Silber’s encouragement, a team of lawyers set out to find and then test evidence from the case for DNA. Midway through that process, Tamara Fisher, then a young lawyer with a high powered firm, used the Freedom of Information Act to get LaGuer’s police file and eventually the fingerprint report at the heart of the current challenge to the conviction.
The file showed that socks and underwear from LaGuer’s apartment were mixed in with the rest of the evidence. Seen together with the miniscule amount of genetic material that yielded the DNA results, it is clear to the experts looking at the case that the way evidence was handled could and probably did lead to contamination.
Theodore Kessis concluded, “…many instances of DNA testing errors have led to the false conviction of innocent individuals… It is my opinion that we have encountered such a case here.” Harvard geneticist Daniel Hartl seconded that finding, writing, “There is, in my opinion, ample reason for a full inquiry into this case, and I hope that the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will agree.”
The issue before the SJC is whether LaGuer was denied a fair trial due to the fact that prosecutors withheld a report showing that four fingerprints lifted from a key piece of evidence — the base of the trim line telephone, the cord of which was used to bind the victim’s wrists — were left by someone other than LaGuer. The detective testified at trial that he only recovered one partial print. That testimony was obviously untrue. If the verdict is overturned then it will be up to a new jury to decide if LaGuer is in fact guilty as charged.
This item in today’s Herald deserves a read. Apparently the lawyer representing LaGuer at his 2000 parole hearing (Yes, the same hearing for which DP sent a letter on LaGuer’s behalf!) is and has been part of the Romney Healey administration. To top it off, get this, she did it pro bono. This is to say she was volunteering her time to get LaGuer out of prison. Compare that with sending a letter. Nuff said.
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As importantly it seems to have become standard in Wedge’s articles (if two make a trend) to acknowdge the serious issues surrounding LaGuer’s conviction. Writes Weddge:
Now, if the rest of the Fourth Estate could rise to this standard we could have a meaningful discussion.
over here.
William Rehnquist‘s son is LaGuer’s lawyer? As in William Rehnquist the archconservative, law-and-order, “original intent” (late) Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court?
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Well, I guess that shows that Kerry Healey’s attacks demonstrated Patrick’s advocacy makes him way too ‘soft on crime’ huh?
Yes. The Boston Herald reported on this a year and a half ago in a J.M. Lawrence article headlined “Renegade Rehnquist Goes To Bat For Convicted Rapist”. He even gave her an interview. It’s been mentioned here and there but unfortunately the MSM hasn’t really picked up on it. Be sure to read the brief he filed with the SJC last month.
It’s not like every son’s politics match those of his father. I have no idea what Jim Rehnquist’s politics are, but I don’t care at all whether they match those of the late Chief Justice.
If you look at his law firm web page, you see that he was a US attorney and now defends white-collar crime cases for a major law firm. High-powered lawyers do pro bono work as part of their jobs — one might conjecture that work as a defense attorney has given Rehnquist an animus against prosecutorial misconduct such as that alleged in the LeGuer case.
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At Amherst I lived in Stearns 105 in 1977-78, where James Rehnquist had lived the year before. He was the resident advisor for the floor and from everything I ever heard, a highly respected and popular student.
Another BMGer picks up on the story here it becomes fodder for the Hillman/Murray debate here. Notice that Hillman writes this off as a lawyer just doing her job as opposed to a criminal-coddling defense attorney going out of his way to send a letter. Hillman neglects to mention that Judith Goldberg was working pro bono. That is to say she was racking up billable hours for which her firm knew it wouldn’t receive a dime. I would say she was in slightly deeper than Patrick. Heck, torso and shoulders deeper.
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(cross posted here)