Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart asked a judge Thursday to toss out the murder conviction of Marvin Williford in a gruesome attack in which a man was beaten with a board, doused with gasoline and set on fire in 2000.
Williford, 53, who was sentenced to 80 years in prison, says he’s innocent of the killing of Delwin Foxworth — and that evidence shows another man was involved.
A DNA test linked genetic material found on the two-by-four used in Foxworth’s beating to an unidentified man’s semen from the rape of 11-year-old Holly Staker in her highly publicized killing in 1992 in Waukegan.
Rinehart told Lake County Judge Daniel Shanes he doesn’t think Williford is innocent. But he filed a joint petition to vacate his conviction because his office conducted an extensive investigation that “led to the discovery of new scientific information — including by DNA and other sciences — as well as evidence of police misconduct.”
The new evidence wasn’t available at the time of the original trial “and would likely change the outcome,” the petition said.
The judge asked Rinehart and Williford’s attorneys, David Owens and Jennifer Blagg, to submit another petition with more facts about the new evidence. He scheduled a status hearing Feb. 18.
Shanes previously rejected Williford’s request to throw out his conviction, saying the DNA evidence presented to him at the time was “of salacious value.” Later, Owens argued that additional DNA testing — and the discovery that Williford and a detective on the case were in a sexual relationship with the same woman — provided stronger evidence of his innocence.
If Shanes vacates Williford’s murder conviction, it’s unclear whether Rinehart would retry him.
After the hearing Thursday at the Lake County courthouse in Waukegan, Owens said Rinehart “agrees this conviction should be vacated and [Williford’s] rights were violated and the trial was not a fair proceeding.” He said Rinehart is stipulating that perjury occurred during the trial. A police officer gave false testimony about key evidence, Owens said.
Rinehart, a former public defender elected in 2020 on a reform platform, has already exonerated two men, Bobby Melock and Herman Williams, both of whom were convicted of murder. The Williford case is different because Rinehart says he isn’t innocent but was the subject of an unfair trial.
In January 2000, Foxworth was held at gunpoint, beaten with a board and bound to a chair during a robbery in North Chicago. He refused to give his assailants money, was soaked with gasoline and was set on fire, police said. He died in a nursing facility in 2002.
A witness identified Williford as a suspect in the killing, but Williford didn’t confess and no physical evidence tied him to the attack, his lawyers have said.
Eight years before Foxworth was attacked, Holly Staker was raped and killed while babysitting two younger children in 1992 in Waukegan.
In 2011, an appeals court overturned Juan Rivera’s conviction in her killing. Rivera got a $20 million settlement in a wrongful conviction lawsuit he filed against Lake County authorities. Since then, no one’s been arrested in Holly’s slaying but former Waukegan police chief Keith Zupec told WFLD-Fox 32 in 2022 of “a very strong viable lead.”