Saturday, June 10, 2006

DA says no evidence withheld in Benjamin LaGuer rape trial

By Matthew Bruun

WORCESTER— District Attorney John J. Conte yesterday said justice had been done in the case of Benjamin LaGuer and denied the former Leominster man’s repeated claims that evidence was withheld in his case before the conviction that netted him a life sentence behind bars.

Mr. LaGuer, 43, has maintained his innocence since his arrest days after the rape and beating of his former neighbor at a Leominster apartment complex. He is now incarcerated at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center on the Lancaster-Shirley line.

This week the Supreme Judicial Court agreed to review Mr. LaGuer’s case, specifically his contention that a potentially exculpatory fingerprint report that was published 18 years after the trial could have swayed the jurors who convicted him.

“We never withheld anything,” Mr. Conte said in an interview yesterday. “He opted to stand trial without waiting for the written reports.”

In a prepared statement, Mr. Conte said Mr. LaGuer’s admitted evidence tampering should deny him further review by the courts and said the DNA analysis the defendant requested proved his guilt to a mathematical certainty.

Mr. LaGuer and his supporters argue the material tested by the DNA expert in late 2001 and early 2002 was tainted by contamination and the results, which implicated Mr. LaGuer, should not be relied upon. The appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court is based on the fingerprint, and Mr. LaGuer’s current lawyer, James C. Rehnquist, said Thursday that questions about the DNA test’s validity would be raised at a new trial.

Mr. Conte yesterday provided a letter sent by Assistant District Attorney James R. LeMire to Peter L. Ettenberg, Mr. LaGuer’s trial lawyer, on Dec. 13, 1983, indicating fingerprint reports had not yet been received by prosecutors.

Mr. Ettenberg wrote back to Mr. Lemire on Jan. 12, 1984, in which the defense lawyer asked if the fingerprint analysis had been returned.

The trial began later that month, ending in Mr. LaGuer’s conviction.

At trial, the Leominster police detective who investigated the case testified that one partial fingerprint was collected from the victim’s apartment from which no identification could be made.

In late 2001, while DNA analysis was already in progress, state police recovered a fingerprint report indicating four fingerprints were taken from the base of a telephone in the victim’s apartment and none of the prints matched Mr. LaGuer.

Mr. Rehnquist argued in his appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court that lower courts erred when they said the potentially exculpatory report would not have played a significant role if known to Mr. LaGuer’s trial counsel.

Mr. Conte denied any evidence was withheld from the defense.

“We never knew about additional prints other than the one that was in the trial,” Mr. Conte said. “Nothing was ever withheld.”

The fingerprint report at the center of Mr. LaGuer’s latest bid for a new trial was discovered in a state police storage facility in November 2001. That report indicates the Leominster detective, himself now deceased, was informed of the negative results. The full report and the fingerprints themselves have not been discovered.

Mr. Conte said Mr. LaGuer does not deserve further review by the courts because he admitted contaminating a court-ordered saliva sample after his arrest. Mr. LaGuer has acknowledged mixing another inmate’s saliva with his own before giving that sample, the results of which were inconclusive.

“There was no physical evidence because he thwarted it,” Mr. Conte said yesterday.

“By filing his eighth motion for a new trial and boldly alleging there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, the defendant mocked the very same court that he defrauded years earlier,” Mr. Conte added in a prepared statement. “His motion and all future claims should be barred based upon the rule that ‘a party may not gain advantage from his own wrong.’ ”

Mr. Conte also repeated his assertion that Mr. LaGuer had no grounds to question the DNA analysis, which was performed by Edward T. Blake, the expert chosen by the defense.