Networked Knowledge - Media Report

This version of the report has been prepared by: Dr Robert N Moles

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On 27 May 2008 Frank Main and Eric Herman reported in the Sun Times "DNA frees man convicted of rape 14 years ago"

They said that fourteen years ago, a police sketch that ran in the Chicago Sun-Times led to the arrest of Dean Cage for raping a 15-year-old girl. Today, authorities said they’re preparing to free Cage from Illinois River Correctional Center in Downstate Canton after DNA tests cleared him. Cage, 41, was serving a 40-year sentence for aggravated criminal sexual assault.

In late 2006, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office was contacted by the New York-based Innocence Project, which sought tests on DNA found on the victim’s shirt and in a swab of her vagina, Gorman said. Prosecutors agreed and five rounds of tests were conducted. Gorman said prosecutors learned of the results Saturday. The DNA samples ruled out Cage, but they were insufficient to compare to a DNA database of criminal offenders, Gorman said. “The case remains open,” he said. Like other criminal cases overturned in Illinois in recent years, the charges against Cage stemmed from apparently faulty witness identifications.

On Nov. 17, 1994, the Sun-Times ran a small police artist’s sketch of the suspect in a 15-year-old girl’s rape that happened three days earlier while she walked to the L train near 70th and Wabash, according to a newspaper account. A woman who saw the composite sketch in the newspaper called Calumet Area detectives to report the suspect looked like a man who worked at a food store.

Police took the victim and her family to Ben’s Food Store at 6915 S. State and the girl identified one of the employees as the offender, according to a newspaper account. After his arrest, Cage was picked out of a lineup by a 29-year-old woman who said she was robbed and raped by him and two other men in February 1994. Cage went to trial and was found not guilty in that attack.

Over the years, Cage has insisted he had nothing to do with the rape of the 15-year-old girl. In 2004, he unsuccessfully sought to have a federal judge release him on grounds that he was innocent. In a handwritten lawsuit, Cage wrote that the victim contracted venereal diseases from the offender, but tests showed Cage did not have any venereal diseases. Cage accused his original defense lawyer, Robert Willis Jr., of ineffective assistance.

He also said he wanted DNA testing on a “rape kit” and the victim’s clothing. Such testing was unavailable at the time of his trial, he said. “Since DNA became law, 13 Death Row inmates have been proven to be actually innocent,” Cage wrote. “Dean Cage is an innocent man wrongly convicted. All he seeks is to have DNA testing performed on the clothing and rape kit of the victim. Justice delayed is justice denied.”

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