DuPage judge to decide whether convicted child killer gets new trial
DuPage County Judge John Kinsella will rule next week in the hearing to decide whether Randy Liebich - the man serving a 65-year sentence for Steven Quinn Jr.'s murder in 2002 - gets a new trial.
Kinsella said he wants to review his notes and all evidence submitted during the hearing, which began in late July, before issuing his ruling.
The Second District Appellate Court ordered the hearing in March 2016 to determine whether Liebich, now 39, should be granted a new trial on the basis of "ineffective assistance of counsel." He is now represented by the University of Chicago Law School's Exoneration Project.
In its 2016 ruling, the appellate court found former assistant public defenders Ricky Holman and John Casey failed to adequately investigate alternate scientific explanations that could have explained the boy's internal brain and abdominal wounds and, ultimately, his death.
Several experts testified during the hearing, each with their own belief on what caused Steven's death.
The former Cook County assistant medical examiner, Dr. Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan, who performed the autopsy, said Steven died of multiple injuries due to blunt-force trauma to his head and abdomen. A second expert said the boy's cause of death could only be undetermined.
Others said they believed the boy died of pancreatitis and was not the victim of physical abuse.
Prosecutors maintain Liebich does not deserve a new trial and was accurately convicted of beating his girlfriend's young son while caring for him in the couple's Willowbrook apartment while the mom was at work. The boy died three days later.
At his trial, Liebich's attorneys argued Steven's mother was physically abusive to the boy and any injuries were caused before Feb. 8, when she took him to the hospital.