Chester Weger, convicted in the 1960 Starved Rock murders case, has been seeking exoneration. A special prosecutor argued Tuesday the time has come to end Weger’s bid.
Will County State’s Attorney Martin Glasgow filed a 78-page pleading Tuesday in La Salle County Circuit Court. In it, Glasgow argued Weger, soon to be 85 years of age, was in fact guilty of murdering Lillian Oetting, one of three women found bludgeoned to death at the state park.
“(Weger’s) repeated insistence that the ‘false confession’ was the only evidence against him,” wrote Glasgow assistant Colleen Griffin, “is simply not true.”
Whether or not Weger can continue his bid for exoneration – a successive post-conviction petition, in legal parlance – will be up to a judge in La Salle County. Judge Michael C. Jansz had scheduled an April 10 hearing on the state’s motion to dismiss.
First, however, lawyers for Weger will have a chance to argue why Jansz should let Weger pursue his exoneration bid. Now that Glasgow’s pleading is on file, a reply from Hale & Monico, the Chicago firm representing Weger, is expected within 30 days.
In Tuesday’s pleading, the special prosecutor argued Weger’s claims of innocence have been heard and rejected before. And while Weger may have raised issues he characterizes as “new,” Glasgow and Griffin argued Weger could have raised these issues at trial and never did so.
Glasgow and Griffin also argued recent laboratory findings are not exculpatory; that is, they do not prove he didn’t commit the crime. In particular, they zeroed in on a recent finding that DNA retrieved from hair, recovered from the glove of victim Frances Murphy, was found not to have been Weger’s.
“That it did not match (Weger’s) hair did not mean that (Weger) did not commit this crime,” they wrote.
“The people would add that (Weger’s) trial cannot be judged by 2024 standards and law, but by the standards and law in effect (when Weger stood trial) in 1961.”
