The fact is, it took 18 years to release a report showing that four fingerprints
from a key piece of evidence (a telephone, the cord of which was used to bind the victim) did not match Mr. LaGuer’s.
District Attorney John J. Conte is quoted as saying, “We never knew about additional prints, nothing was withheld.”
He should know better than anyone that it makes no difference if it is the prosecutor, the investigating officer or the analyst
who knew. The commonwealth has an ironclad responsibility to disclose potentially exculpatory evidence.
Mr. Conte falls back on a 2002 DNA
test which failed to exonerate Mr. LaGuer, claiming that it proves Mr. LaGuer’s guilt “to a mathematical certainty.”
This is hogwash. First, it has no bearing on whether Mr. LaGuer got a fair trial in 1984. Second, three independent
DNA experts have since reviewed the test concluding that it was unreliable.
In fact, Dr. Theodore Kessis in a letter to state Rep. Ellen Story, D-Amherst, wrote, “Many instances of DNA testing errors have led to the false
conviction of innocent individuals. It is my opinion that we have encountered such a case here.”
Mr. LaGuer
deserves a new trial. That will be the appropriate place to fully evaluate the DNA evidence.
