Thursday, 4:30 PM
SJC upholds LaGuer conviction
By Jonathan Saltzman and Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff
The Supreme Judicial Court today upheld the 23-year-old rape conviction of Benjamin LaGuer, whose case dogged Governor Deval Patrick during his successful campaign last fall.
In a unanimous decision, the court rejected an argument for a new trial based on an 18-year-old State Police report that an appellate attorney said showed that four fingerprints found at the crime scene did not belong to LaGuer.
"We conclude that, in the unusual circumstances of this case, the fingerprint evidence that was not produced has not been shown to have any bearing on the defendant's guilt or innocence, and is consequently not exculpatory as to this defendant," wrote Justice Judith Cowin in the decision for the court.
On the day of Patrick's inauguration in January, attorney James C. Rehnquist argued before the SJC that LaGuer should get a new trial because the police report showed that investigators recovered four fingerprints from the base of a telephone, the cord of which was used to bind a 59-year-old rape victim in her Leominster apartment complex.
Rehnquist said the defense knew of one fingerprint that didn't belong to LaGuer, but did not know of the existence of the other three. That evidence, Rehnquist argued, might have swayed the Worcester County jury.
"What is important is that the defendant's fingerprints were not present on the telephone," the court said in today's ruling. "That there could have been one, four, or more fingerprints on the telephone does not render that fact more exculpatory than informing the jury that one fingerprint did not match the defendant."
The SJC noted that at LaGuer's trial, the lead detective acknowledged that police had found no physical evidence at the rape victim's apartment despite her allegation that her attacker had raped her over an eight-hour period. Nonetheless, the court noted, a jury convicted LaGuer in 1984 of repeatedly raping and sodomizing the woman over an eight-hour period.
Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey pilloried Patrick during the campaign for twice writing the state Parole Board on LaGuer's behalf over the past decade and for donating $5,000 to help pay for DNA testing. LaGuer and his advocates, who have included John Silber, former Boston University president, have questioned the validity of the DNA test, which has never been examined by a court. Several forensic specialists contacted by LaGuer say the DNA evidence may have been tainted. LaGuer contends that investigators mixed items from the victim's apartment with underwear seized from his apartment next door.
Today's ruling only referred briefly to DNA evidence and the results of tests that LaGuer had hoped would clear him. Those tests implicated him in the crime, and LaGuer later argued that those procedures had been botched. The SJC said in a footnote that it had not considered the DNA evidence in the ruling.
