A judge in Lucas County Common Pleas Court dismissed charges Friday against the remaining four men convicted for murder in a Toledo man’s 1992 beating death in light of lawyers for the fifth man having found lost evidence pointing toward other suspects.
Judge Joseph McNamara on Dec. 16 had granted motions filed by brothers Ismael and Lorenzo Vasquez to withdraw the Alford pleas they entered in early 1994 after the three other defendants — Eric Misch, Joseph Rickard, and Louis Costilla, Jr. — had been convicted in 1993 by juries for the death of Vernon Huggins. He also granted new-trial motions Rickard and Costilla filed.
In Lucas County Common Pleas Court Friday, Judge McNamara granted a motion by the Lucas County Prosecutor’s Office to dismiss charges against the Vasquezes, Rickard, and Costilla, as had already happened for Misch in November after Judge Gary Cook granted Misch’s motion for a new trial.
While the charges were dismissed without prejudice, meaning prosecutors theoretically could bring new charges against the five for Mr. Huggins’ death, Tim Sweeney, Ismael Vasquez’s Cleveland-based lawyer, said the current outcome effectively clears them.