Chester Weger case: No new special prosecutor

Chester Weger won’t get a new special prosecutor, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Tuesday, the 84-year-old parolee appeared in La Salle County Circuit Court and asked Judge Michael C. Jansz to remove the current special prosecutor, the Will County State’s Attorney’s Office, and assign Weger’s case to another agency.

Jansz wouldn’t do it. The judge ruled there was no actual conflict of interest with Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow, which means Glasgow and his staff will remain in the case.

Next: Weger and his lawyers will ask Jansz to send additional pieces of evidence from the 1960 Starved Rock murders to a lab for fresh testing. Weger hopes to prove he was wrongly convicted of the murders. A hearing on whether to send the next batch to the lab will be held at 2:30 p.m. July 19.

Weger attorney Andy Hale had grown frustrated with Glasgow and asked to have him removed, even as he acknowledged he was seeking “extraordinary relief” in demanding a new special prosecutor.

At oral arguments Tuesday, Hale said Will County is required by statute to investigate the Weger case anew – “Will County cannot just sit there and do nothing” – yet the office has consistently failed or refused to do so.

“Something is not right,” Hale said. “Why have they not done any of those fundamental, basic things that you would expect and that they are required to do?”

He added later, “It is, to me, an outrageous dereliction of duty – a lack of any interest in getting to the bottom of this.”

Hale asked to have Glasgow put on the stand and made to answer why he has declined to pursue the investigation and to explain dismissive comments about the merits of the case.

In response, Assistant Will County State’s Attorney Colleen Griffin said the law requires Hale show an actual conflict of interest or the appearance of impropriety and Hale has shown neither.

“The defense is just really mounting an attack on Mr. Glasgow,” Griffin said, adding later, “Mr. Hale’s statement that the state has done nothing in this case is simply incorrect.”

Rather, Griffin said, the state has reviewed the case and simply disagrees with Hale’s conclusions. Hale, she said, also overstated the condition of the physical evidence as well as the admissibility of hearsay statements from witnesses who have died.

“All the people who would testify that this [was] a 1960 mob hit are dead,” Griffin said, singling out one of Hale’s stated theories. “The state can’t really investigate the 1960s mob.”

Weger was sentenced to life in prison for the 1960 murder of Lillian Oetting, who was found bludgeoned to death along with two companions. He confessed to the killings but recanted and has spent the past six decades trying to throw out his conviction.

More recently, Weger’s attorneys have asked for fresh testing of the 1960 evidence, arguing that scientific advances have made it possible to get results that once were unobtainable.