New Trial Denied in Rape in Which Accuser Recanted

A judge on Monday denied a new trial for Gary Dotson in the 1977 rape that his accuser later said never occurred.

Cook County Circuit Judge Richard J. Fitzgerald returned his decision after a 2 1/2-hour hearing in which a prosecutor said that the criminal justice system had “turned somersaults for Gary Dotson.”

Acquittal Denied

Fitzgerald said that he based his decision on an examination of the original trial records and of hearings before Circuit Judge Richard Samuels in which Dotson was denied an acquittal earlier this year.

The postconviction relief Dotson was seeking “was not intended to provide a method of obtaining successive evidentiary hearings where there has already been a full review,” Fitzgerald said.

Dotson’s lawyer, Jack Rimland, said he would file an appeal.

Assistant State’s Atty. J. Scott Arthur said: “It’s a relief it’s over.”

Dotson, who was not present at the hearing, is recovering from hepatitis, Warren Lupel, another of his attorneys, said.

Dotson, 28, of suburban Country Club Hills, was convicted in 1979 of raping Cathleen Crowell Webb in 1977. Webb, who at the time was a high school student living in suburban Homewood, came forward in March to say that the rape never occurred. She now lives in Jaffrey, N. H., with her husband and two children.

Sentence Commuted

Dotson’s attorneys sought to overturn his conviction based on the recantation. The case went before Samuels in April. But Samuels, who had sentenced Dotson to prison, did not believe Webb’s new story and refused to overturn the conviction.

Gov. James R. Thompson later commuted Dotson’s sentence, saying that, although he did not believe the recantation, Dotson had been punished enough. He had served six years of a 25- to 50-year sentence.