A Washington judge on Thursday
granted a new trial to the man convicted of killing federal intern
Chandra Levy in 2001, after prosecutors dropped their opposition to a
defense request to re-try the case. D.C. Superior Court Judge
Gerald I. Fisher, who presided over the 2010 trial that sentenced Ingmar
Guandique, 34, to 60 years in prison, set aside the verdict and agreed
to bring the case before a new judge and jury. “Unless there is
something else to be said, I would grant the motion for a new trial,”
Fisher said in a brief hearing attended by Guandique, who was dressed in
an orange prison jumpsuit. Since 2013,
Guandique’s D.C. Public Defender Service attorneys have argued that his
conviction “was based on a lie,” purportedly spun by a former cellmate
who they said testified that Guandique confessed to killing Levy in a
bid to win favor with prosecutors. The government did not
disclose to the defense that their key witness, a convicted drug dealer
and gang member, had cooperated with prosecutors in other cases,
Guandique’s attorneys argued.........The case triggered a media sensation when
police investigators at first suspected and then cleared Gary A. Condit,
a married California congressman who was 30 years her senior, and with
whom Levy was conducting an affair.........No
eyewitness, forensic evidence, nor medical cause of death linked
Guandique to Levy’s death. But other women joggers assaulted in Rock
Creek Park at the time testified against Guandique, who was serving 10
years in prison for assaulting two women at knife point in the park when
he was charged with Levy’s death. Onetime cellmate, Armando
Morales, testified that Guandique had told him he was high on drugs, saw
Levy walking alone with a waist pouch and attacked her for cash. Jon
Anderson, one of Guandique’s public defenders, said that although
Morales testified at trial that he had never cooperated with prosecutors
in other cases, federal prosecutors in the District knew or should have
known that he had offered to testify in the past for favorable
treatment."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/dc-judge-grants-re-trial-in-2001-killing-of-intern-chandra-levy/2015/06/04/0a282286-09fd-11e5-a7ad-b430fc1d3f5c_story.html?wpisrc=al_alert-COMBO-local%252Bnational