AP News, March 23rd, 2007
A convicted rapist whose support from Gov. Deval Patrick became an election flash point last fall lost his eighth bid for a new trial Friday.
The state Supreme Judicial Court rejected Benjamin LaGuer's claim that a state police fingerprint report that was not disclosed to the defense could have helped prove his innocence. The court said the fingerprint evidence would have had no bearing on the outcome.
LaGuer was sentenced to life in prison in 1984 after being convicted in the aggravated rape of a 59-year-old neighbor. She identified him at the trial, and DNA tests in 2002 linked him to the crime scene.
Before the DNA tests, LaGuer's claims of innocence and repeated efforts to win a new trial attracted many supporters, including former Boston University President John Silber and historian Elie Wiesel.
Patrick, before he became governor, corresponded with LaGuer in the 1990s and wrote letters to the parole board in 1998 and 2000, supporting his early release.
During the gubernatorial campaign last year, former Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey used the LaGuer case in TV ads depicting Patrick, a former prosecutor, as soft on crime. She attacked him for his parole board pleas on LaGuer's behalf, running a frightening ad of a woman being stalked that ended: "Deval Patrick, he should be ashamed _ not governor."
Patrick won with 56 percent of the vote.
Patrick has said he believed when he wrote the letters that there were credible allegations of racism among the jurors. He says he now believes LaGuer is guilty, based on the DNA evidence, which Patrick helped pay for.
"The governor's perspective is that justice has been served," Patrick spokesman Kyle Sullivan said Friday.
LaGuer's appellate attorney, James Rehnquist, was out of town Friday and could not immediately be reached for comment. A message was left at his Boston law office.
"This legal decision, following an unfortunate politicization of the case, is not the end of the line for LaGuer because the underlying merits of his claims and the need to air them in a public and transparent way cannot be denied forever," said Eric Goldscheider, a journalist who has supported LaGuer's bid for a new trial.
