Convict will appeal on Patrick's day

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 probably would prefer to have to himself.

On Thursday, about 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 John Silber, former Boston University president, and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel -- have called an injustice.

For Patrick, whom Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey pilloried for twice writing the state Parole Board on LaGuer's behalf over the past decade and for donating $5,000 for DNA testing, 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."

In a telephone interview from prison this week, LaGuer said an 18-year-old State Police fingerprint report that surfaced in November 2001 revealed that investigators recovered four fingerprints from a telephone, the cord of which was used to bind the victim, and that none of the prints matched his.

If a jury had heard that evidence, he might have been acquitted, he said.

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 that 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."

However, Worcester Assistant District Attorney Sandra L. Hautanen said in her brief that the fingerprint report does nothing to prove LaGuer's innocence. The "overwhelming evidence at trial left no doubt," she said, asserting that LaGuer was the intruder who repeatedly raped and sodomized the woman in her apartment over eight hours.

The victim, who identified LaGuer as her attacker, has since died.

A Superior Court judge turned down LaGuer's eighth request for a new trial in 2003. Despite arguments by LaGuer's lawyer, James C. Rehnquist, son of the late Supreme Court chief justice, a state Appeals Court panel upheld the ruling, concluding that there was no proof that the fingerprints were left during the crime and were relevant.

LaGuer's case caused a firestorm in the governor's race as Healey contended that Patrick's advocacy proved the former federal civil rights prosecutor was unfit for the office. But LaGuer has long been a cause célèbre.

A skilled writer, he built a coterie of advocates who believed he was wrongly convicted, in part because the all-white jury that convicted him was biased because he is black and Puerto Rican.

LaGuer's champions were stunned when tests he had long sought confirmed that DNA recovered from the victim had been identified as his. Some of his advocates concluded they had been conned.

Patrick, who wrote the Parole Board in 1998 and 2000 to say he was impressed by LaGuer's letters to him, said during the race that the DNA results persuaded him "justice has been served."

But several forensic specialists contacted by LaGuer say the DNA evidence may have been tainted. LaGuer said investigators mixed items from the victim's apartment with underwear seized from his apartment next door. If so, said the specialists, this might explain why his DNA turned up.

"It's not a reliable test result," said Theodore D. Kessis of Applied DNA Resources in Columbus, Ohio, who reviewed the tests. "When postconviction testing happens, everybody assumes that it's perfect. The irony here is that the fallibility of humans has, in a sense, made Ben look even guiltier."

It is not known whether the DNA results will come up in Thursday's arguments.

Patrick, who will be inaugurated a few blocks away, will have his attention elsewhere, said his spokeswoman.

"The governor-elect's focus on Inauguration Day will be on his inauguration and reaching out to as many people as he can," Roy said.

Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.