By Matthew Bruun TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

LEOMINSTER— The latest bid for a new trial by Benjamin LaGuer, the man convicted of rape whose case became a lightning rod in this year’s gubernatorial election, will be the subject of oral arguments before the Supreme Judicial Court on Jan. 4.

Worcester District Attorney John J. Conte’s office filed its response to Mr. LaGuer’s request for a new trial yesterday.

Mr. LaGuer, 43, was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison in January 1984 after a jury convicted him of aggravated rape in connection with the brutal assault on his former neighbor at a Leominster apartment complex on July 12, 1983. The bloodied victim, then 59, was found the next morning on the floor of her apartment.

She died in 1999.

Mr. LaGuer was arrested on July 15, 1983, and the victim identified him in court as her attacker. Mr. LaGuer has maintained his innocence since his arrest and has gathered high-profile supporters to his cause, including Gov.-elect Deval L. Patrick, who wrote letters on Mr. LaGuer’s behalf to the Parole Board in 1998 and 2000 and contributed $5,000 to a fund for DNA analysis in the case.

The DNA results, published in 2002, further implicated him, but Mr. LaGuer has found several experts to question the results. Those experts say the results may have been compromised by contamination.

Mr. LaGuer’s latest motion for a new trial is based on a potentially exculpatory fingerprint report that was never shared with the defense until late 2001.

His lawyer, James C. Rehnquist, son of the late chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, has said the DNA results would be tackled in the event a new trial is granted.

The fingerprints in question were taken from the base of a telephone in the victim’s apartment, the cord from which was used to bind the woman’s hands during the eight-hour assault.

The fingerprint report, dated July 16, 1983, indicated that four complete fingerprints taken from the base of the victim’s telephone did not match Mr. LaGuer. The report also states that Leominster police Detective Ronald Carignan was informed of the results by telephone.

At trial, Detective Carignan said no complete fingerprints could be identified from the crime scene. The defense lawyers argue Mr. LaGuer was deprived of his rights by the suppression of the fingerprint report.

In the prosecution argument filed yesterday with the SJC, Assistant District Attorney Sandra L. Hautanen wrote that the fingerprint report was never in the prosecutor’s possession before the trial. They also argue the defense knew there were no fingerprints collected matching Mr. LaGuer at the scene, “and made a reasonable, tactical decision to proceed to trial without the report.”

The prosecutor argues the only thing not disclosed to Mr. LaGuer’s lawyer in the weeks before the trial was that a state police trooper found four non-matching prints on the phone, not just one.

“The prosecution must disclose evidence ‘which provides some significant aid to the defendant’s case, whether it furnishes corroboration of the defendant’s story, calls into question a material, though not indispensable element of the prosecution’s version of events, or challenges the credibility of a key prosecution witness,’ ” Ms. Hautanen wrote. “The existence of four non-matching prints, instead of one, provided no ‘significant aid’ to defendant’s case.”

In the defense filing in September, Mr. LaGuer’s lawyers argued that prosecutors misled his trial counsel Peter L. Ettenberg in 1984.

“At the time of trial, the only fingerprint evidence Mr. Ettenberg believed existed was falsely described as being a partial fingerprint recovered from the telephone that ‘could not be matched’ to Mr. LaGuer,” the defense lawyers said.

“Rather than testifying that four fingerprints which conclusively did not match Mr. LaGuer’s were recovered from one of the primary instruments used in the crime, Detective Carignan testified that only one ‘small partial’ print was found on the phone,” the lawyers wrote in September.

Detective Carignan also said nothing to indicate that state police had analyzed other fingerprints and found “that someone other than Mr. LaGuer had grasped the base of the telephone,” the lawyers said.

“This testimony was seriously and intentionally misleading in view of his knowledge of the fingerprint report, which indicates on its face that Detective Carignan was informed of the results before trial,” the defense lawyers wrote. “However, since the existence of these four fingerprints and the corresponding fingerprint report were suppressed, Mr. LaGuer’s counsel was unaware that Detective Carignan’s testimony was demonstrably false, and therefore unable to incorporate this evidence into its defense.”

In the prosecution filing made yesterday, Ms. Hautanen recounts Mr. LaGuer’s seven previous bids for a new trial, all of which have been rejected. Among the issues raised in the earlier motions included allegations of racism on the all-white jury.

The Superior Court found the allegations in the juror’s affidavit were “wildly exaggerated and uncorroborated” and “not essentially true,” and the juror had signed the affidavit only “after (many months of) serious lobbying by advocates for LaGuer,” and felt “baited and hooked” by LaGuer and his supporters, Ms. Hautanen wrote.

She also cites Mr. LaGuer’s admission that he tampered with a court-ordered saliva sample given shortly after his arrest.

The prosecution argues Mr. LaGuer waived his right to relief in the courts when he violated the court order in 1983.

“Defendant deserves no relief, due to his post-trial admission made under oath that he tampered with his court-ordered saliva sample, which is clear and convincing evidence of ‘fraud on the court,’ ” the prosecutor wrote.