{"id":18526,"date":"2012-12-10T15:38:15","date_gmt":"2012-12-10T20:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=18526"},"modified":"2012-12-10T15:38:15","modified_gmt":"2012-12-10T20:38:15","slug":"man-cleared-in-1986-lake-county-rape-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=18526","title":{"rendered":"Man Cleared In 1986 Lake County Rape Case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CHICAGO &#8211; Today is the day <strong>Bennie Starks<\/strong> has been waiting for.<\/p>\n<p>After spending 20 years in prison for a beating and rape he didn\u2019t commit, Starks will be free of all charges.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Starks<\/strong> was convicted in 1986 of assaulting a 68-year-old woman and served 20 years of a 60-year sentence when DNA evidence was retrieved that excluded him from the crime. An appeals court ordered a new trial in 2006, and <strong>Starks<\/strong> was released on bond.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis has been a great day,\u201d <strong>Starks<\/strong> said in May after Lake County prosecutors dropped sexual assault charges in the decades-old Waukegan rape.<\/p>\n<p>The State\u2019s Attorney had previously threatened to retry <strong>Starks<\/strong> on the charges but dismissed the sexual assault counts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe fight is not over with yet,\u201d he said at the time. \u201cWe still have one more hurdle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CHICAGO &#8211; Today is the day Bennie Starks has been waiting for. After spending 20 years in prison for a beating and rape he didn\u2019t commit, Starks will be free of all charges. Starks was convicted in 1986 of assaulting a 68-year-old woman and served 20 years of a 60-year sentence when DNA evidence was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}