DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) - A man sentenced to life in prison in the 1990 slaying of a 9-year-old girl in Davenport is getting a third trial due to an Iowa Supreme Court decision.
The high court recently declined to review a November appeals court ruling that vacated Stanley Liggins’ first-degree murder conviction in the death of Jennifer Lewis, the Quad-City Times reported (https://bit.ly/1fxh72l ). Scott County Attorney Mike Walton said the decision means prosecutors have no more appeals and must retry the case.
“It will have to be tried again,” he said.
Juries twice convicted Liggins, now 51, in the death of Jennifer, 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.
The Iowa Supreme Court overturned the first conviction on a technicality. The Iowa Court of Appeals reversed the second conviction, saying prosecutors should have told Liggins’ attorneys that a key witness was a paid police informant.
“He is an innocent man, and he deserves to be released,” said Kent Simmons, Liggins’ attorney. Simmons said he will stop representing his client for the upcoming trial because he will likely testify. He did not elaborate.
Prosecutors will have 90 days to bring the case to trial. Walton said his office has begun searching for witnesses who testified at the first two trials, which both took place in the 1990s. Evidence used to convict Liggins also remains in storage.
Mary Maxwell-Rockwell, a friend of Jennifer’s parents, told the newspaper a third trial will be difficult for the family.
“It needs to be put to rest for the family’s sake,” she said. “It’s very heart-wrenching on the family to have to relive the horror of it all again.”
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Information from: Quad-City Times, https://www.qctimes.com
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