An AP story on Ben LaGuer’s upcoming SJC hearing just hit the wire. It is a decent, pretty well balanced account of where things are at. The one bone I’d pick has to do with the DNA test widely assumed to seal LaGuer’s guilt.
His relentless efforts to win a new trial took a major blow in 2002, when DNA tests long sought by LaGuer, now 43, backfired by linking him to sperm taken from the victim.
Weber, though close, got this part wrong. BMG’s Charley Blandy asked the question in his Oct. 4 post: “Doubt about LaGuer’s DNA test — is anyone reporting this?” When is the mainstream media going to start doing its homework and report the serious problems that serious DNA experts have identified in that test? Follow Charley’s link for the best quotes from very strongly worded expert opinions. The full texts of the experts’ letters are availble for download at www.BenLaGuer.com. Read Weber’s whole story here.
Over the years the Associate Press has done some of the best reporting on the LaGuer case. At the last parole hearing in 2003 Theo Emery was one of the reporters who really seemed to get it. Denise Lavoie did an excellent job of covering the Appeals Court hearing last year. But it was another reporter who did the original spade work on the juror racism issue back in 1987. That would have been John King who is now the CNN White House Bureau chief. That work eventually led to LaGuer’s first trip to the SJC in 1991.
John King