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A MAN WHO spent 34 years in prison for the rape and shooting dead of a teenage girl was released from prison this week after a judge vacated his murder conviction, citing new DNA evidence.
Lewis Fogle, 63, was freed on bond because he remains charged and could be retried by District Attorney Patrick Dougherty, who filed the joint motion to vacate the conviction with the New York-based Innocence Project.
“We are incredibly grateful to District Attorney Patrick Dougherty for working with us to conduct the DNA testing and for acknowledging that Mr. Fogle’s conviction should be set aside,” said David Loftis, managing attorney for the Innocence Project.
But Dougherty said his actions and the judge’s decision do not mean Fogle has been exonerated in the death and rape of 15-year-old Deann Katherine Long in 1976.
“I am not agreeing that he is actually innocent,” Dougherty said.
I also don’t want to let somebody out that deserves to be in prison.
Dougherty is reviewing and attempting to gather more evidence before announcing 14 September whether Fogle will be retried for second-degree murder.
“Always hopeful”
In Pennsylvania, that’s defined as any killing that occurs during another felony, in this case rape.
Fogle has denied any involvement. He was the only one of four people arrested in March 1981 to be tried. Paul Cates, a spokesman for the Innocence Project, said attorneys don’t want Fogle answering questions about the case “because there’s too much at stake”.
“I hoped this day would come,” Fogle said as he was leaving the prison grounds, The Tribune-Review newspaper reported.
“Sometimes it seemed like it was never going to come.”
Fogle’s wife, Deb Fogle, said they were “always hopeful” he’d be released.
“He’s my husband, and I love him,” she said tearfully. “We’re just so happy today.”
The murder
Deann’s body was found 31 July 1976 by a stranger picking blackberries in the woods.
The previous day, Deann’s younger sister saw a man telling her their brother had been in a car crash, and the sister later saw her in the man’s car.
That man checked himself into a psychiatric facility and was questioned about the killing five times but was never charged. But after he was hypnotized to aid in the investigation, he said he was present when Fogle, his brother and two other men raped the girl before she was shot.
Fogle was tried and convicted after three jailhouse informants testified he confessed to them. Charges against his brother, who is imprisoned for a child sex conviction last year, were dismissed under speedy trial rules. Prosecutors eventually cited a lack of evidence in dropping charges against the other two, one of whom has since died.
Dougherty said the new DNA evidence came from a semen sample gathered from Deann’s body using new technology. The tests showed the semen wasn’t Fogle’s.
“I believe that would have been enough to give him a new trial, and that’s all I agreed to do,” Dougherty said. He’s having the sample tested to see whether it matches any of the others originally charged.
But even if it does, Dougherty said, there may not be enough evidence to retry Fogle.
Witnesses may have died or may not remember as much after all these years, he said.
“The question is, 40 years later, do we have the pieces of the puzzle?” Dougherty said.
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so the Irish people that were trafficked weren’t trafficked…gotcha , I was beginning to wonder had that well known Leitrim to Donegal route kicked off again….
Keep allowing them in and soon enough it will be your daughters and granddaughters that Thell be grooming for sex. Not just yet, it’ll take more of them to live here before they get the courage, but it’s on its way, keep watching.
The people involved in this should be locked up for life ie 30 years plus
@Fjordie, the people involved in this will be out as soon as possible, this allows the legal industry to make more money off them the next time their caught, when again, they will be promptly released, and the legal industry continues to rake in the money, look at what happening now, people with up to 100 prior convictions being given suspended sentences, why, so the legal industry can make money from having their product in circulation.
Suspended sentences all round
change the record
Must have heard about the gravy train the you can go on after exploitation. #inbeforetheracists.
And the prize for most obnoxious troll goes to…
not to mention incoherent
What is conspicuously missing from this story is a very important question;
“How many of these children were in State “Care” when they were trafficked?”
We’ve had this conversation before, when it emerged that 500 went “Missing” from “Care”, but when the truth emerged it was found that the entire thing had been covered up by Gardai, the HSE and the government. The truth was that that we only found out because Wikileaks released diplomatic documents from the American Embassy in Dublin. While the government said they were “Missing”, the US State Dept. showed that most had been accounted for and were trafficked. Many of the children were found in brothels or enforced slavery.
You’ll have to pardon me for using quotation marks on the word “Care”. I wonder will Wikileaks have to step in again to find out how many of these children were in State “Care”?
So true.
Ireland is not known as the Hub of child trafficking for nothing.
Yes children in care are prostituted out- but the state never prosecutes itself.
No one in power wants to know and use excuses like – secret court rules, blahhhhhh,blahhhhh
The Immigrant Council yet again calling for ”the criminalisation of the purchase of sex”, completely ignoring the fact that coercive trafficking and commercial sex work are entirely different things. Amnesty, UNAIDS, The World Health Org and as of today the UK Home Office Select Committee all advocate decriminalisation but apparently the ‘experts’ of TORL, ICI & Ruhama know better.
Thanks lily ☺
Not a bother. Negative attention is still attention right? Lap it up pet.
your talking to me aren’t you? you realize you don’t have to? lol
@Lily, their beliefs and culture are not compatible. What would you say to anyone of the women who were abused/raped in Europe, or to the countless children, what you say to the mother of the young boy who was raped in a public swimming pool in Europe only to be told that the reason was the immigrant had a “sexual emergency”. And yes, our own countries have our own issues, but it’s committed by perverts, whereas it’s the accepted culture where these people come from.
Conri, Nowhere did I make any comment to suggest I condone violence or assault. You have done a marvellous job of reading subtext where there was none.
@Lily, As you have, no where did I say you did condone violence , you also have done a marvellous job of reading subtext where there was none, we’ve so much in common you and I. Actually I was just stating (as a comment in response to yours) that this is an incompatible culture and will lead us down a very dark path if something is not done to stem the flow, it’s been described as an invasion, I agree with this. Can you please respond to the following question: do you want to see some of our towns and cities end up like some of Britain’s, unrecognisable to English people, unsafe for them to venture into ?
have your say