Many readers tell me these days they’ve been reading TPM since the very beginning. If you’ve really been reading since near the beginning you’ll remember that – oddly, paradoxically – TPM was early on the story of the death of congressional intern Chandra Levy, while official Washington was still mainly averting its eyes because it held then-Congressman Gary Condit (D-CA) in such high regard. The whole tragic story elevated into a vast media circus in the summer of 2001 and was only knocked out of the headlines by the staggering news of the September 11th attacks that closed out the summer. Despite vast suspicion centering on Condit, who was having an affair with Levy at the time she was killed, years later the story took an unexpected turn when a petty criminal named Ingmar Guandique was charged with and later convicted of the crime. Now, almost 15 years later, the case has taken another dramatic turn.
Guandique was convicted of Levy’s murder in 2010 and sentenced to 60 years in prison. But he was granted a new trial last year in part on the basis of a key witness, a jailhouse informant, lying about providing evidence to police in the other cases. Today though prosecutors announced that they were dropping all charges against Guandique.
The key is that the motion appears to rule out a mere decision that prosecutors could no longer get a conviction or a legal technicality. It suggests, without quite saying definitively, that they no longer think Guandique actually committed the crime.
Form the Associated Press …
According to the statement, prosecutors concluded they can no longer prove the murder case against Guandique beyond a reasonable doubt, “based on recent unforeseen developments that were investigated over the past week.” The statement does not elaborate.
“After investigating this information and reviewing all of the evidence in this case, the government now believes it is in the interests of justice for the court to dismiss the case without prejudice,” prosecutors wrote in a one-page motion.
Again, there’s a bit of reading between the lines here. But not much.
We don’t know what that evidence was. But it was evidence investigated if not discovered in the last week. So the case seems to be over in terms of Guandique. And prosecutors’ actions suggest that they may no longer think he was killer.
