DeKALB — A former Sycamore man who is currently serving a 55-year prison sentence is seeking a retrial after being charged for abducting a former student at gunpoint and raping her at his home in 2001.

April 25, 2001, Todd Allgood, a 51-year-old former NIU student, approached a 21-year-old student in the gravel parking lot of 1100 W. Lincoln Highway, now Lincoln Tower, according to city court records. Allgood abducted the student at gunpoint and forced the student to drive to his home in Edgebrook Trailer Park in Sycamore. He raped the student, and then made her drive back to Gabel Hall where he exited her vehicle, according to the records.

Allgood told the student that if she said anything, he would claim the encounter was consensual and would come back and kill her, according to city court records.

Allgood was found guilty by a DeKalb County Court in 2002 for the attack. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for aggravated kidnapping and 30 years for aggravated criminal sexual assault. Along with these sentencings, Allgood received an additional 15 years for using a firearm.

The judge who issued the sentence said Allgood is required to serve 85% of the sentence, which will add up to 46 years and nine months, according to a Nov. 6, 2002 Northern Star article.

Since Allgood has been found guilty, he’s served 17 years of his prison sentence at Dixon Correctional Center, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections inmate list.

The Illinois Second District Appellate Court said July 10 that Allgood’s added 15-year sentence due to the use of a firearm violates the proportionate-penalties clause of the Illinois Constitution, but this doesn’t give the authorization to reverse Allgood’s convictions, according to court documents.

The proportionate-penalties clause of the Illinois Constitution limits penalties after a conviction is determined according to the seriousness of the offense and with the objective of restoring the offender to useful citizenship, according to article one section 11 of the Illinois Constitution.

Allgood’s lawyer, Daniel Transier, is appealing the July 10 decision and will appear on Allgood’s behalf during Allgood’s next court date Dec. 10.

“Judge Robbin Stuckert is going to have to schedule a date where [Allgood] can be brought back to be entitled to a new sentencing because that’s what the Second District Appeals Court has afforded him,” Transier said.

Transier said Allgood was waiting for the Illinois Supreme Court to accept an issue that the appellate court had refused, but the supreme court, in turn, rejected it as well. The case now goes back to Sycamore for the issue of a sentencing hearing.

This isn’t the first time Allgood has sought a retrial.

In September 2006, he filed a petition alleging ineffective assistance of counsel, according to court documents. In September 2011, Allgood filed an amended petition alleging that the 15-year sentence violated the proportionate-penalties clause because it punished him twice for the same crime.

During Allgood’s trial in 2001, he was also linked to similar attacks near Mundelein, Illinois, in 1989 and 1990, according to a Nov. 6, 2002, Northern Star article. Allgood’s DNA matched the DNA of the two cases but there were no convictions of the two other assaults due to expired time limits of filing criminal charges.