\n<\/p>\n
In an unusual legal twist, a judge has appointed an outside attorney to review a request by Lake County State\u2019s Attorney Eric Rinehart to toss out a murder conviction.<\/p>\n
Judge Daniel Shanes has directed former Lake County Bar Association President Donald Morrison to handle the inquiry.<\/p>\n
Rinehart and Marvin Williford\u2019s lawyer David Owens had filed a joint petition to vacate Wlliford\u2019s conviction from more than two decades ago. On April 10, they went to court expecting to make arguments on their petition.<\/p>\n
But Shanes slammed on the brakes.<\/p>\n
In a four-page order, the judge postponed the hearing and appointed Morrison. He said he wasn\u2019t comfortable with the agreement between the prosecutor and defense attorneys.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdvocacy from both sides of a case best promotes the ultimate objective that the guilty be convicted and the innocent go free,\u201d Shanes wrote. \u201cThe adversarial process, vital to the administration of justice, is absent here.\u201d<\/p>\n
He listed the things he wants Morrison to review, including which of Williford\u2019s legal claims are different from ones he made earlier, whether the judge is bound by an earlier Illinois appeals court decision that upheld Williford\u2019s conviction, and other legal questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was surprised by the court\u2019s ruling,\u201d Owens told the Chicago Sun-Times.<\/p>\n
He says he knows of no other post-conviction hearings in Illinois in which a third-party lawyer \u2014 called a \u201cfriend of the court\u201d <\/i>or amicus curiae <\/i>\u2014 was appointed to be an adversary of the defendant.<\/p>\n
Contempt of court hearings are about the only ones in which he knows that\u2019s happened, Owens says.<\/p>\n
Still, he says he\u2019ll abide by Shanes\u2019 order.<\/p>\n
In that order, Shanes cited a 1976 Illinois appeals court case that said it\u2019s within the court\u2019s discretion to appoint amicus curiae<\/i> to investigate and conduct a hearing.<\/p>\n
Asked about the order, Rinehart released this statement: \u201cThe court has brought in research assistance to distill the relevant legal issues around reversing a conviction within the trial court. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs the prosecutor who is ethically bound to respond to and reverse injustices, I am focused on three aspects of this case: 1) new information about the original investigating detective and confidential informant; 2) new science around the unfairness of certain photo lineup identification procedures; and 3) the meaning of DNA testing results that were not available at the time of the original trial.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to get this right for the family, the defendant and the community,\u201d Rinehart said.<\/p>\n
Last month, Rinehart and Owens filed their joint petition to vacate Williford\u2019s 80-year sentence in a home invasion in which Delwin Foxworth was beaten with a 2-by-4, soaked with gasoline and set ablaze in 2000. Foxworth died two years later.<\/p>\n
In court, Rinehart has said he doesn\u2019t believe Williford is innocent but still thinks his conviction should be overturned because he didn\u2019t get a fair trial. If Williford\u2019s conviction is vacated, it\u2019s unclear if Rinehart would retry him.<\/p>\n
The petition says a North Chicago detective lied on reports and on the witness stand at Williford\u2019s 2004 trial.<\/p>\n
The petition also points to new DNA evidence. In recent years, the Lake County state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office conducted a post-trial investigation that included DNA testing. Williford\u2019s DNA wasn\u2019t found on the crime scene evidence, including the board. But DNA on the 2-by-4 was linked to an unidentified man\u2019s semen from the rape of 11-year-old Holly Staker in her 1992 killing in Waukegan.<\/p>\n
In 2011, an appeals court overturned Juan Rivera\u2019s conviction in Holly\u2019s killing. Rivera got a $20 million settlement in a wrongful conviction lawsuit he filed against Lake County authorities. Since then, no one\u2019s been arrested in Staker\u2019s slaying.<\/p>\n
Rinehart\u2019s predecessor had opposed vacating Williford\u2019s conviction. In 2018, Shanes rejected Williford\u2019s request for a new trial, saying the lack of his DNA on the crime scene evidence doesn\u2019t prove his innocence. Shanes also said unreliable identification evidence didn\u2019t violate Williford\u2019s due process rights.<\/p>\n
Across the country, legal experts have been grappling with the reluctance of some judges to grant requests from prosecutors to vacate convictions. That discussion intensified last year when a Missouri man was executed over the objections of St. Louis County\u2019s top prosecutor.<\/p>\n
In February, the American Bar Association\u2019s House of Delegates passed a resolution to help prosecutors trying to vacate wrongful convictions who come up against procedural obstacles or court skepticism, according to the ABA Journal.<\/p>\n
The resolution said \u201cappropriate weight\u201d should be given to a prosecutor requesting that a conviction be vacated and \u201cabsent compelling evidence in the record to the contrary, that such request be granted.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n