DuPage County prosecutors Wednesday dropped all charges against a Willowbrook man convicted in 2004 and sentenced to 65 years in prison for the first-degree murder of 2-year-old Steven Quinn.
Leaving the courtroom a free man for first time since being charged in 2002, Randy Liebich, now 39, said he never doubted this day would come but he wasn’t expecting it Wednesday.
“I’m feeling a million different emotions right now. I spent 17 years locked up for something I didn’t do,” Liebich said outside the courtroom. “Now I’m going to leave here and begin rebuilding my life.”
Liebich was convicted in a 2004 bench trial of beating the child to death, causing head and abdominal injuries.
DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said Wednesday that after considering evidence from the 2004 trial, testimony from the 2018 post-conviction hearing, in which Judge John Kinsella ruled Liebich deserved a new trial, as well as a letter he received in February from the forensic pathologist who conducted the boy’s autopsy, that prosecutors cannot meet the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
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