GIST: Special prosecutors in the ongoing Chester Weger saga this week submitted a motion to dismiss the convicted killer's case to vacate his conviction.
WLPO reported in January that the filing was in development. It's just the latest step in the octogenarian's effort to clear his name in the 1960 murder of one of three women who were found bludgeoned in a canyon at Starved Rock State Park.
At the time of the murders, Weger admitted to killing one of the victims, Lillian Oetting, and was sent to prison.
A prosecutor in the Weger trial, La Salle attorney Anthony Raccuglia, died in 2019. Weger was paroled from prison in 2020. Since then, Weger has been fighting to vacate his conviction.
His legal team has about a month to respond to the motion to dismiss his request. All parties are due back in Judge Michael Jansz's Ottawa courtroom on April 10.
Weger's attorney, Andy Hale, has seized on scientific testing that indicates a hair not belonging to Weger was found on the glove of another murder victim.
Hale says this is evidence his client is innocent.
What isn't clear is how another man's hair found on another woman's glove exonerates Weger for killing a different person.
Hale says the hair belongs to a person whose name Hale has not come across in all his research on the case.
Following a court appearance last month, another Weger attorney, Celeste Stack, was asked to divulge the last name of the brothers. Instead she said it was confidential."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.starvedrock.media/wlpo/weger-prosecutors-push-back-on-confessed-killers-request-to-dismiss-conviction/article_7c91054a-c614-11ee-afab-2373329f3168.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog; |
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801
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