{"id":2163,"date":"2015-11-12T09:04:21","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T17:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/fairbanks-four-trial-ends-judge-wont-rush\/"},"modified":"2015-11-12T09:04:21","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T17:04:21","slug":"fairbanks-four-trial-ends-judge-wont-rush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/fairbanks-four-trial-ends-judge-wont-rush\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Fairbanks Four’ trial ends, judge won’t rush"},"content":{"rendered":"

FAIRBANKS \u2014<\/strong> Four men who claim they were wrongly found guilty of killing a Fairbanks teenager in 1997 will have to wait learn the outcome of their most recent trial.<\/p>\n

Closing arguments in the post-conviction relief trial for the so-called Fairbanks Four \u2014 George Frese, Kevin Pease, Marvin Roberts and Eugene Vent \u2014 wrapped up Tuesday. But Superior Court Judge Paul Lyle said his decision in the case likely won\u2019t come for several months, reported The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a long process,\u201d Lyle said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had five weeks at trial. I have a lot of decisions I need to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

The four men were sentenced in the fatal beating of 15-year-old John Hartman 18 years ago and have been behind bars ever since.<\/p>\n

They sued the state for an \u201cactual innocence\u201d declaration based on the recantation of a key witness who testified against them and new information that alleges another group of high school students killed Hartman.<\/p>\n

Judges typically have six months to hand down a ruling after taking a case under advisement.<\/p>\n

Lyle said that six-month period will not begin until he finishes reviewing the transcripts from the three original trials and later post-conviction relief attempts. He said he plans to complete that review by the end of January, putting off a ruling until July.<\/p>\n

But Lyle also indicated that going past the six-month mark could be a possibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want you to think that I will rush to make the six-month deadline or be concerned about how I\u2019m going to get my own bills paid if I don\u2019t meet the six-month deadline,\u201d he said. \u201cThe court is prepared to deal with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Lyle does finally decide on the case, he could choose to release the four men with a declaration of innocence or order a new trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FAIRBANKS \u2014 Four men who claim they were wrongly found guilty of killing a Fairbanks teenager in 1997 will have to wait learn the outcome of their most recent trial. Closing arguments in the post<\/a>-conviction relief trial for the so-called Fairbanks Four \u2014 George Frese, Kevin Pease, Marvin Roberts and Eugene Vent \u2014 wrapped up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":2164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2163"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}