The murder conviction of Jason Strong, shown in 2010 in Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Ill., is to be reviewed by the office of state Attorney General Lisa Madigan. (Zbigniew Bzdak, Chicago Tribune / August 18, 2010)
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office has agreed to further investigate the case of a man convicted of murder in Lake County before authorities had identified the woman he allegedly killed.
Her office agreed Thursday to subpoena police records and potentially interview people Jason Strong's lawyers see as alternate suspects in the 1999 slaying. Authorities once staunchly resisted Strong's innocence claim, but now Madigan's office and State's Attorney Mike Nerheim are both re-examining the evidence against Strong, who hopes his will be the fifth major felony case to collapse in Lake County since 2010.
Though Strong confessed, his attorneys have argued that his statement was coerced and that the identification of the victim — she was revealed in 2006 to be Mary Kate Sunderlin, 34, a mentally disabled Kane County woman — cast doubt on prosecutors' account of her beating death.
The new investigative efforts are part of Strong's attorneys' bid to persuade a federal judge to free him or order a new trial. Madigan spokeswoman Maura Possley said lawyers in her office have not taken a stance on Strong's case but decided it was worth further examination.
Pending a judge's approval, Madigan's office would subpoena police and prosecutor's records and other documents and then seek any forensic tests that lawyers might deem necessary after reviewing the files.
After that, sworn statements could be sought from people defense lawyers see as alternate suspects. One woman associated with Sunderlin before her death tried to get an ATM card in her name after her disappearance, according to a private investigator's report filed in court.
Another deposition could be taken from a man Sunderlin married late in her life who has an arrest record and a history of mental illness. He has confessed to killing her but gave clashing and sometimes obviously inaccurate statements, according to court records.
Other depositions could be taken from people who testified against Strong at his trial but later said they lied.
Strong, 38, also awaits DNA tests on any material on the clothes the victim wore, including a shirt identified as Strong's by a witness who now says she lied. Nerheim has put the case before a panel designed to root out injustices like those that dogged Lake County before he took office in 2012.
Strong was arrested in 1999 after the body was found in a forest preserve on the North Chicago-Waukegan border. Armed with a confession, prosecutors at trial said Strong invited her into the motel where he lived near Wadsworth and then attacked her after finding her looking through his things, beating her and bashing her with a bottle before two alleged accomplices helped him dump her.
Strong was convicted and sentenced to 46 years. He is not projected to be paroled until he's 70.
Prosecutors defending his conviction in court have said he led them to where the body had been found earlier and that his admission was said to match details of the body's condition. Strong maintains police fed him the details in his confession and led him to the body.
Strong's lawyers have also asked to take depositions from a prosecutor and police officers involved in the investigation, each of whom also was involved in at least one of the cases undone by DNA evidence in the past three years. It has yet to be decided whether those men will be asked to give statements.
dhinkel@tribune.com