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Prosecutor Supports Throwing Out McCullough Conviction

Jack McCullough’s 2012 conviction in the 1957 death of seven-year-old Maria Ridulph should be thrown out, according to a filing by DeKalb County State’s Attorney Richard Schmack.

The filing made Tuesday is in answer to an amended petition filed Monday by McCullough’s latest attorneys, Gabriel Fuentes and Shaun Van Horn of the Chicago law firm of Jenner and Block.

McCullough was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2012, and his murder conviction was upheld by the Second District Appellate Court in 2015.

The defense filing – officially known as an “Amended Post-Conviction Filing Demonstrating Actual Innocence” – lists numerous points in support of concerns with the evidence used to arrest McCullough in his Seattle-area home in July 2011 and return him to Sycamore for trial in September 2012.

Schmack’s filing says that all the points raised in the amended petition are true and the 76-year-old defendant – who has been incarcerated in some form for nearly five years -- is actually innocent.

“The People now join in Defendant’s Amended Post-Conviction Petition,” Schmack wrote in his filing Tuesday, “and adopt its pleadings as a … Motion to Vacate Judgment filed on behalf of the People for the purpose of remedying Defendant’s conviction of a crime he did not commit.”

It asks that the court “enter an order vacating the judgment of conviction previously entered against Jack D. McCullough … on the grounds of actual innocence.”

In a March 25 filing detailing his court-ordered six-month review of the case, Schmack touched on many of the points that the defense used in its filing this week.

In a news release accompanying that filing, said he wished that the murder of Maria Ridulph had been solved and her killer imprisoned for life.

"When I began this lengthy review I had expected to find some reliable evidence that the right man had been convicted," Schmack wrote. "No such evidence could be discovered. Compounding the tragedy by convicting the wrong man, and fighting further in the hopes of keeping him jailed, is not the proper legacy for our community, or for the memory of Maria Ridulph."

At the last hearing on April 1, DeKalb County Judge William Brady noted that he had given the victim’s older brother Charles Ridulph until April 15 to enlist an attorney to help with a petition for a special prosecutor, adding, "I don't think it would be fair for me now to alter what I said."

Also at that hearing, Brady told the defense that he would not order McCullough’s immediate release on that date but would allow the attorneys to file an amended petition – which they did on Monday.

The case returns to Judge Brady’s court Friday morning.