By Jon King / jking@whmi.com


A Green Oak Township man will get a new trial on charges that he raped a young girl in 2018 at a local golf course.

On Monday the Michigan Court of Appeals denied a request by prosecutors to overturn a ruling granting a new trial for 22-year-old Zachary Lally, who was convicted in March of 2020 by a Livingston County jury on five felony counts, including first and second-degree criminal sexual conduct.

They arose from a 2018 incident involving a teenage girl who worked at the Oak Pointe Golf Course. The victim had testified that she got into a golf cart with Lally, who she said had been drinking, to go search for a deer that had been spotted earlier. She said when they got to a stand of trees; Lally forced himself onto her, at first trying to kiss her, but then pushing her to the ground and raping her. She said he again tried to assault her later that same night but was interrupted by other club members.

However, after the verdict had been delivered, but before the sentence could be handed down, attorneys for Lally presented evidence they said shows then-Assistant Prosecutor Pamela Maas solicited perjured testimony from a Livingston County Sheriff's detective. Specifically, a conversation between Maas and Livingston County Sheriff's Det. Greg Thompson was caught on tape between proceedings in which Thompson indicated that he had forgotten his prior testimony as to why Lally's clothes had not been sent to the Michigan State Police Crime Lab to test for possible DNA. Mass reportedly said they had sufficient evidence without the testing and instructed Thompson to, "just say that we discussed it.” When the trial resumed, Detective Thompson gave that exact answer when questioned by Maas, and then again the next day under cross-examination by Lally’s attorney Rolland Sizemore.

Hatty later determined that Maas “improperly influenced” the detective’s testimony, and that the testimony in question was “false” and that Mass knew it was false. Further, Judge Hatty determined that statements from Maas during closing arguments that male DNA had definitively been detected on evidence in the case was not supported by the facts, and that in reality, a crime lab expert had only testified that such findings were possible, but not conclusive. Hatty called it a “false statement” to the jury related to “critical information at issue in this case – DNA evidence.” Based on those conclusions, Hatty said Lally had been denied a fair and impartial trial and a new trial was warranted.

On Monday, the Michigan Court of Appeals agreed and denied the prosecutor’s appeal. Lally, who is free on a $500,000 bond, is due back in court on Friday when a status conference in the case will be held.