Gaege Bethune, Jackson County mug
JACKSON CO., Ill. - It remains unclear as to which side the blame falls on - the state, or the defense - but a long-awaited murder conviction has been overturned, and attorneys are readying for a new trial.
And the prosecution is going to have to be very careful this next go-round, as the hubris-filled defendant and his equally-hubris-filled-acolytes are now jumping up and down for joy that their boi, Gaege Bethune, now seems to have a reprieve coming his way.
Bethune is the arrogant 20-something who effectively confessed to taking the actions that caused the February 2014 death of Southern Illinois University-Carbondale student Pravin Varughese, 19, but then changed his story so many times that pretty much everyone stayed in a perpetual state of confusion until a little over a year ago, when David Robinson, a prosecutor from the State's Appellate Prosecutor's Office, finally was able to get an indictment and, in June of this year, a jury trial found Bethune guilty of the murder of Varughese.
Bethune was slated to be sentenced today, Monday, September 17. However, with a whole new legal team funded by his dysfunctional family, they were able to distract the sentencing long enough to convince the judge in the case, Mark Clarke, that the jury was improperly informed of their options where the instructions were being provided (this is a very typical technicality that gets cases like this overturned at the state level; and while it doesn't happen very often, a crack legal team can generally convince a judge, even one as astute as Clarke, that there exists grounds for the case to be overturned on appeal...so a judge worth his salt will remand it back to the courtroom rather than risk a high-ticket prospect such as getting someone in prison, then doing all the appeals work from said prison, as this is expensive and lengthy).
The new legal team of Steven Greenberg and T. Liam Kelly have overcome this first little hurdle; whether they'll be so successful in subsequent hurdles - such as actually getting Bethune through another trial with a not-guilty verdict - remains to be seen. Bethune's first attorney was former Jackson County State's Attorney Mike Wepsiec, who seemed more focused on trying to stop the support for the Varughese family than he was trying to prove his client's non-guilt.
It remains unclear where Bethune is currently; since he hadn't yet been sentenced, he's not in IDOC, but it's unlikely that since the guilty verdict in June he's been out and about, so he might still be locked up in Jackson County. There's been no word on when the next hearing will be; however, the involved parties have advised that they believe the new trial will come next year...so be prepared for Bethune's grandmother and others of that ilk to become insufferable on their online profiles and attack members of the Varughese family - who just want some justice - starting about now and continuing indefinitely.