DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) - An Illinois man twice convicted for the 1990 killing of a 9-year-old girl in Davenport will be tried for murder once again.
At a Friday hearing, Stanley Liggins’ new trial was set to begin the week of Oct. 27, the Quad-City Times reported (https://bit.ly/PwJmqJ ). Liggins, 51, appeared on video from the Scott County Jail during the hearing. He did not speak.
His public defender, Phil Ramirez, has filed motions requesting the state produce evidence in the case and seeking to exclude certain evidence at trial. A hearing for those motions was set for June 11.
It will be the third time Liggins is tried in the case. Juries twice convicted Liggins in the death of Jennifer Lewis, who disappeared from her Rock Island, Ill., neighborhood. Investigators say she was raped and strangled, wrapped in a plastic bag, doused with gasoline and set on fire near a Davenport elementary school.
A Scott County jury first convicted Liggins in 1993, but the Iowa Supreme Court overturned the verdict. A second jury in Dubuque County convicted him in 1995 and he was sentenced to life. Another appeal of that conviction was denied the next year.
But in November, the Iowa Court of Appeals vacated Liggins’ conviction and ordered a new trial, saying prosecutors withheld police records from Liggins’ defense attorney and did not disclose that a key witness in Liggins’ trial was a paid police informant.
Prosecutors appealed, but the Iowa Supreme Court declined to review the case in January, leaving prosecutors with the choice of retrying the case or setting Liggins free.
Scott County Attorney Mike Walton said his office has begun looking for witnesses who testified at Liggins’ two prior trials.
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Information from: Quad-City Times, https://www.qctimes.com
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