Lake County prosecutors suffer another setback in DNA case

Lake County prosecutors suffer another setback in DNA case


By Dan Hinkel
Tribune reporter
3:36 PM CST, February 15, 2012

Appeals judges have dealt another blow to Lake County authorities in a criminal case involving DNA, barring prosecutors from using evidence they said was key to their attempt to retry a man for a 1986 rape in Waukegan.

Lake County prosecutors have been preparing to retry Bennie Starks, who spent nearly 20 years in prison before he was freed on bond in 2006. That’s when appeals judges ordered a new trial, citing semen evidence that did not match Starks.

Last year, a Lake County judge ruled that if prosecutors did retry Starks, they could not use statements from the victim, who died after the first trial. Prosecutors argued the inability to use her statements would “substantially impair” their ability to retry Starks, and they appealed.

On Tuesday, judges from the state’s 2nd District Appellate Court affirmed the ruling that the victim’s past statements would not be allowed. The judges based their ruling, in part, on the fact that Starks’ lawyers were not aware at his first trial of the DNA evidence that would be found later, meaning they did not have a chance to cross-examine her on the topic.

Prosecutors have 21 days to decide whether to ask the appeals court to reconsider its ruling, and 35 days to decide whether to seek review by the Illinois Supreme Court, said Jed Stone, Starks’ lawyer.

“While they can go to trial, I don’t know why they would do it, when it is clear to me and much of the world that Bennie Starks is yet another wrongfully convicted person,” Stone said.

“Eventually, this case will wither and die,” he said.

Lake County State’s Attorney Michael Waller could not immediately be reached for comment.

As to the conflicting DNA evidence, former Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Mermel had previously argued that the evidence did not clear Starks because the woman could have had consensual sex with someone else. The woman, however, had said she did not have sex within two weeks of the attack.

Waller announced Mermel’s retirement in December after the assistant prosecutor made comments to The New York Times about DNA evidence that spurred Republican Sheriff Mark Curran to call for his firing.

Starks’ case is one of four high-profile instances in which Lake County prosecutors have continued to pursue a suspect after DNA appeared to point away from that person. Several of those cases have recently fallen apart.

In December, the appeals court delivered a stinging reversal of Juan Rivera's conviction in the rape and stabbing death of 11-year-old baby sitter Holly Staker in Waukegan in 1992. Rivera served nearly 20 years in prison after he was found guilty at three separate jury trials. Semen that was not Rivera’s was found inside the victim, but authorities argued that didn’t clear him, instead contending the victim must have had sex with another man before she was killed.

Appeals judges called prosecutors’ theories “highly improbable.” Rivera, 39, was released last month after prosecutors decided not to challenge the ruling.

In a second case, Waller's office dropped murder charges against Jerry Hobbs and freed him in August 2010 after he spent five years in jail awaiting trial for stabbing his daughter Laura Hobbs, 8, and her friend Krystal Tobias, 9, in a Zion park.

Prosecutors had argued that semen discovered in his daughter’s body could have been deposited inside her as she played in a wooded spot where couples went for sex. But in early 2010, the DNA was matched to a former Marine from Zion, Jorge Torrez, who has now been convicted and sentenced to life in prison for an unrelated rape. He also faces a charge that he murdered a Navy petty officer in her Virginia barracks in 2009.

No one has been charged in the Zion killings since Hobbs' release.

The most recent case to come to light is that of James Edwards, who was convicted of the 1994 bludgeoning murder of Waukegan appliance store owner Fred Reckling, 71. Though blood found at the scene did not come from the suspect or the victim, prosecutors argued that didn't clear Edwards because it could have come from one of Reckling's employees.

But the blood was recently matched to a man arrested on armed robbery charges on the North Shore weeks after the murder, according to court records.

Prosecutors have said they are digging back into that case.

Rivera, Hobbs and Edwards all confessed to their crimes, but their lawyers have argued the admissions were coerced by police in grueling interrogations.

Please read complete article at link below:


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-lake-county-prosecutors-suffer-another-setback-in-dna-case-20120215,0,6065750.story