Background info on the Jeanine Nicarico case
- From: indigoace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Indigo Ace)
- Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:35:26 GMT
>From Eric Zorn's blog at the Chicago Tribune--
Backgrounder: The Jeanine Nicarico case
I've written columns about the Jeanine Nicarico murder case for more
than 10 years (the collection is [at
http://www.ericzorn.com/columns/nicarico/ ]) and can offer you this
highly condensed background briefing in light of today's indictment of
Brian Dugan:
On Friday, Feb. 25, 1983, 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico was abducted
from her home in unincorporated Naperville home, brutally raped and
slain. Investigators narrowed in on a trio of Aurora mopes: Alex
Hernandez, Stephen Buckley and Rolando Cruz.
Cruz and Hernandez had been telling demonstrably false tales about the
murder for various reasons, but these led to a grand jury indictment
of the three men in March 1984.
The case was built on unreliable statements by would-be informants and
contained no physical evidence against the defendants. When it became
clear the men would go to trial, Du Page County Sheriff's Detective
John Sam, who helped lead the investigation in the early months,
resigned from the department in disgust.
Sam has said his disgust was heightened when the key evidence in the
trial turned out to be a statement prosecutors said Cruz made to
detectives on May 9, 1983. Two of Sam's former colleagues said Cruz
had related to them a vision containing details of the crime. These
details were reasonably accurate and therefore incriminating.
But the detectives never took notes or wrote up this supposed
statement and never told their partners or the grand jury about it.
Indeed this blockbuster "vision," which Cruz denies recounting, came
out of nowhere just before the trial.
Cruz and Hernandez were convicted and sentenced to death in 1985. The
jury deadlocked on Buckley, and the case against him ultimately was
dropped.
That same year, Aurora resident Brian Dugan was arrested for the
brutal rape and murder of 7-year-old Melissa Ackerman of Somonauk. He
confessed to that sex crime and a series of others, and he offered a
detailed admission --though not a formal confession -- to the Nicarico
murder.
Veteran State Police Lt. Ed Cisowski conducted an in-depth
investigation of the Dugan statements starting in November, 1985, and
came away 100 percent sure, he said, that Dugan and Dugan alone raped
and murdered Jeanine.
Nevertheless, DuPage County prosecutors remained skeptical and did
not accept Dugan's offer to plead guilty in exchange for another life
sentence.
In 1988, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the convictions of Cruz
and Hernandez on grounds the men should have been tried separately.
Du Page prosecutors declined to offer Dugan immunity from the death
penalty in the Nicarico murder, so he refused to testify at the second
trials of Cruz and Hernandez in the early 1990s. The prosecutors
successfully argued to keep information about his accurate confessions
to the other crimes from the jury and Cruz was again convicted, .
Cruz and Hernandez were again convicted. Hernandez got 80 years, and
Cruz was condemned to death.
"Someday, sooner or later, the public will realize what has happened
in Nicarico," then Kane County State's Atty. Gary Johnson wrote in a
1991 letter to a Du Page County judge. Johnson, who had served as
Stephen Buckley's attorney in the 1985 trial, wrote that this
realization "will do to prosecutors what the Rodney King police
beating tapes have done to the police."
In early 1992, Mary Brigid Kenney, the assistant attorney general
assigned to fight his appeal, resigned in protest and urged Atty. Gen
Roland Burris in a letter to stop "this ugly prosecution."
"It's not for me to place my judgment over a jury, regardless of what
I think," Burris told reporters after the resignation. "A jury has
found this individual guilty and given him the death penalty It is my
role to see to it that it is upheld. That's my job."
A 4-3 majority of the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the Cruz
conviction later in 1992 with the astonishing assertion, "The State's
case consisted of physical evidence linking defendant with the crime."
Cruz, since he was on Death Row, became a cause celebre. And in July,
1994, the state's high court reversed its earlier ruling and ordered a
third trial for him.
Since a new round of DNA testing had shown Brian Dugan was likely the
person who raped Jeanine, the state's new theory of the case was that
Cruz, Hernandez and Dugan together committed the crime.
At his third trial in November, 1995, Cruz was abruptly acquitted and
freed halfway through the trial when one of the officers involved in
the so-called vision statement said that he'd discovered documentary
evidence suggesting the story could not have happened the way
authorities said it happened.
Charges were subsequently dropped against Alex Hernandez as well.
In 1999, seven member of the DuPage County law enforcement community
were tried in criminal court on charges that they conspired to frame
Rolando Cruz for Jeanine's murder. They, too were acquitted.
Cruz, Hernandez and Buckley reached a modest civil settlement with
DuPage County. As Cruz was going before the state prisoner review
board for a full pardon, on Nov. 15, 2002 , DuPage County state's
attorney Joseph Birkett announced that the latest and most
sophisticated round of DNA testing showed that Brian Dugan's DNA
matched DNA evidence at the crime scene to a scientific certainty.
http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2005/11/backgrounder_th.html
--
Anne
indigoace at goodsol period com
http://www.goodsol.com/cats/
.
- Prev by Date: Suspect charged in 1983 slaying of Jeanine Nicarico
- Next by Date: Iowa professor wants to reap forensic data at `body farm'
- Previous by thread: Suspect charged in 1983 slaying of Jeanine Nicarico
- Next by thread: Iowa professor wants to reap forensic data at `body farm'
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
