PHOTO CAPTION: "In this March 29, 2016 file photo, Jack McCullough, 76, appears in court for a hearing on his petition for post-conviction relief at the DeKalb County Courthouse in Sycamore, Ill. McCullough was convicted in 2012 for the 1957 slaying of Maria Ridulph, of Sycamore. But State’s Attorney Richard Schmack said that the investigation and prosecution was flawed. "... "A northern Illinois judge said he has anguished over allegations that a former Washington state security guard was wrongly convicted in the 1957 slaying of a 7-year-old girl, but he refused Friday to order the man’s release from prison until legal proceedings play out. Newly appointed attorneys for Jack McCullough, 76, filed the request the day before, citing a scathing report from the local prosecutor that concluded old files and some new evidence demonstrated McCullough couldn’t possibly have killed Maria Ridulph. McCullough was cleared in the 1950s by investigators in the death of his neighbor. But he was convicted in 2012 after investigators reopened the case based on evidence including the deathbed comment by McCullough’s mother that she thought her son had killed the girl. The murder case made headlines nationwide in the days after Ridulph was abducted while playing in the snow near her house on Dec. 3, 1957. When it went to trial four years ago, it was one of the oldest unsolved cases to have ever gone to trial. Thursday’s filing pointed to a childhood friend of Ridulph’s who purportedly identified McCullough as the killer five decades later from an array of six photographs as the man who played with Ridulph before she vanished. McCullough’s picture stood out, including because everyone but him was wearing a suitcoat, the filing said. “To use this sort of evidence at a criminal trial in the United States of America shocks the conscience,” the filing by his newly appointed attorneys says."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/attorneys-want-man-convicted-in-girls-1957-killing-set-free/2016/03/31/4df17dc4-f7a9-11e5-958d-d038dac6e718_story.html
See earlier post of this Blog at the link below; Jack McCullough: Illinois; The passage of time, evidence, and prosecutor Richard Schmack's "difficult and unpopular" decision: The Mimesis Law Blog - a brilliant criminal justice Blog with very fine posters - presents 'Richard Schmack and the Maria Ridulph Case: When A Prosecutor Gets It."..." "On a snowy night in 1957, Maria Ridulph disappeared from a street near her house in the small town of Sycamore, Illinois. Her body was found a few months later. Over the next half-century, the case would travel from unsolved mystery to the oldest cold case conviction in the country to the epitome of a wrongful conviction. Jack McCullough was ultimately convicted of Ridolph’s murder. In a hearing scheduled for today (March 31, 2016), a judge is expected to overturn that conviction. The journey from that snowy night to this hearing has involved about every issue in the criminal justice system, from “noble cause corruption” to suggestive identification. But the most important issue in the case has been the behavior of DeKalb County State’s Attorney Richard Schmack. The hysteria of a high-profile criminal case and public sentiment against the defendant is enough to make an elected prosecutor run for the hills. Had Schmack done that, McCullough would have likely served the rest of his life sentence and no one would have been the wiser. Instead, Schmack put the ethics of being a prosecutor ahead of the politics of prosecuting and scored a win for the criminal justice system." (Must, Must Read HL);
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=120008354894645705#editor/target=post;postID=2206382755691267879;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=17;src=link
See CNN story, video and link to appeal: "Nostalgia" and flimsy evidence led to
guilty verdicts in the nation's oldest cold case ever solved, according
to the man serving a life sentence for kidnapping and murdering a
neighbor's child in 1957. In his 80-page appeal,
former police officer Jack Daniel McCullough says he deserves a new
trial because his mother was allowed to accuse him from the grave --
while he was kept from proving that he was elsewhere when a 7-year-old
girl was abducted and killed. The appellate brief,
filed Thursday by the Illinois state appellate defender, noted that
nobody saw who grabbed Maria Ridulph from a street corner in Sycamore,
Illinois, or witnessed how or where she was killed. No forensic evidence ties McCullough -- or anyone else -- to a crime so shocking it captured the attention of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the appeal states. Instead, the court papers
say, prosecutors built their case on unreliable evidence, including
inmate witnesses whose motives were suspect and others whose memories
were dulled by the passage of time: "The evidence against
Jack McCullough," the appeal contended, "was so unreasonable, so
improbable, and so unsatisfactory as to create a reasonable doubt that
he was responsible for a 1957 murder, kidnapping, and abduction of an
infant." That evidence included
"personal memories of what occurred 55 years ago; a photo identification
made 53 years after the incident; testimony from jailhouse informants;
innocuous statements from the defendant; and an improperly admitted and
inconclusive statement from the defendant's mother while on morphine and
Haldol just before her death." The appeal cited many of the issues raised by legal experts who spoke with CNN for "Taken: The coldest case ever solved," a five-part multimedia series published in August. The series was the basis for an hour-long documentary that aired on HLN. Read the appeal (PDF) McCullough was convicted
in September 2012 of kidnapping and murdering Maria Ridulph 55 years
earlier. The brown-eyed second-grader vanished from the corner of
Sycamore's Archie Place and Center Cross Street on the evening of
December 3, 1957. Her body was found the
following spring in a grove of trees off a busy state highway about 120
miles away. The crime, which shook the small farming community to its
core, is believed to be the country's oldest cold case ever prosecuted. Now 74, McCullough is serving a life sentence at a state prison in Pontiac, Illinois. He denied committing the
crime in several letters to CNN and in a jailhouse interview last year.
He also denied having anything to do with Maria's disappearance and
death in a lengthy police interrogation in Seattle hours before his
arrest. Prosecutors and investigators said his odd demeanor during
questioning convinced them they had the right man. The DeKalb County
State's Attorney, which prosecuted McCullough, declined comment and
referred calls to the Illinois state appellate prosecutor, which also
declined to comment on a pending case. A court clerk said both sides
should finish filing their briefs by late June and arguments could be
scheduled by summer."
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/21/justice/oldest-cold-case-appeal/index.html?hpt=hp_t2See Wrongful Convictions Blog post: "We reported on this case two years ago. In September, 2012, Jack McCullough was convicted of a murder committed in 1957. The conviction was based largely upon an eyewitness identification made 53 years after the crime by a woman who was 8 years old at the time of the crime. Please see: Defendant in Coldest Case Ever “Solved” Appeals His Conviction. The wrongful conviction litany just repeats and repeats. In this case it includes a false eyewitness identification, a false deathbed accusation, and (surprise) exculpatory evidence withheld from the defense."
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2016/03/25/illinois-prosecutor-says-man-convicted-in-oldest-cold-case-is-innocent/
