More time needed in latest Lake County DNA case

Attorneys continue to wait on DNA test results to determine if a Chicago man was wrongly convicted in a grisly January 2000 attack on a North Chicago man.

During a brief status hearing Tuesday, Lake County Judge George Bridges granted more time for testing after attorneys said lab technicians need another month to complete their work on items found in the North Chicago home where Delwin Foxworth was beaten.

Defense attorney David Owens, of the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School, said he also would need more time after the DNA tests are finished to review the findings and determine if they show whether Marvin Williford, 43, was involved in the slaying.

Williford is serving an 80-year prison sentence after being convicted in 2004 of attacking Foxworth, who was beaten with a 2x4 board, bound with duct tape and set on fire, officials said. Foxworth ultimately died from his injuries in 2002.

DNA recovered from the board used to beat Foxworth did not match Williford, authorities said. However, the DNA touch samples matched DNA found in the 1992 murder of 11-year-old Holly Staker in Waukegan.

Staker was stabbed, raped and strangled inside a Waukegan apartment where she baby-sat.

Juan Rivera, formerly of Waukegan, was convicted of the murder and spent 20 years in prison. However, DNA evidence exonerated Rivera, and he was released from prison in January 2012.

No one has been charged with the crime since his release.

Like Rivera, Williford has long maintained his innocence and never confessed to the crime, Owens said.

On Tuesday, Owens told Bridges the investigation is not focusing only on DNA, but also on other items recovered in the home where Foxworth was beaten.

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More time needed in latest Lake County DNA case