Thursday, 4:30 PM
Twist of timing ties Patrick and LaGuer again
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff
Benjamin LaGuer, the convicted rapist who became an incendiary issue in the gubernatorial race after news reports that Deval L. Patrick had advocated for his release from prison, will take the spotlight again next week on a day the new governor would probably prefer to have to himself.
On Thursday, around the same time Patrick takes the oath of office outside the gold-domed State House, the Supreme Judicial Court is scheduled to hear arguments that LaGuer was wrongly convicted in 1984 of raping a woman in a Leominster apartment complex.
It will be LaGuer's second appeal to the state's highest court and the latest in a series of efforts to reverse a conviction that several prominent people, including former Boston University President John Silber and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, have called an injustice.
Patrick's Republican opponent, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, pilloried him for twice writing the state Parole Board on LaGuer's behalf over the past decade and for donating $5,000 for DNA testing.
Now for Patrick, the appeal is a matter for the courts and not on his radar now, said his spokeswoman Cyndi Roy. "To be honest with you, this is an issue that we dealt with during the campaign," said Roy, who said she was unaware of the timing of the two events. "It's an issue that the governor-elect has moved on from quite some time ago."
LaGuer, however, has plenty to say.
In a telephone interview from prison this week, he said an 18-year-old State Police fingerprint report that surfaced in November 2001 revealed investigators recovered four fingerprints from a telephone whose cord was used to bind the victim and that none of the prints matched his. If a jury had heard that evidence, he said, he might have been acquitted.
He also said the 2002 DNA tests -- which instead of clearing him, linked him to the rape of the 59-year-old woman -- relied on contaminated evidence. LaGuer has obtained analyses from forensic experts who agree the test may have been botched, although his appeal focuses on the fingerprint evidence.
"I am innocent, and I want to be vindicated," said LaGuer, 43, who is serving a life sentence. "The fact that the Supreme Judicial Court is undertaking this case ... proves that regardless of what you think, there are meritorious issues, legally."
