On July 28, Brian Dugan plead­ed guilty to the rape and mur­der of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico in Illinois 25 years ago. Two oth­er men, Rolando Cruz, (pic­tured) and Alejandro Hernandez, were orig­i­nal­ly charged with the mur­der and were sen­tenced to death. They were even­tu­al­ly exon­er­at­ed in 1995 after numer­ous tri­als. At the plead­ing, DuPage County State’s Attorney Joseph Birkett acknowl­edged that there had nev­er been any phys­i­cal evi­dence point­ing to the two men who were wrong­ly con­vict­ed. Dugan was not promised a life sen­tence in exchange for his plea and still faces a death sen­tence from a jury in the fall. He admit­ted that he alone was respon­si­ble for the mur­der. As ear­ly as 1985, Dugan con­fessed his sole respon­si­bil­i­ty for the crime, but the pros­e­cu­tion con­tin­ued its case against Cruz and Hernandez. The case con­tributed to a huge upheaval of Illinois’ death penal­ty sys­tem, final­ly result­ing in the com­mu­ta­tion of all death row inmates in 2003 and to a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions that con­tin­ues to the present time.

(A. Barnum, ​“Dugan pleads guilty to killing Jeanine Nicarico,” Chicago BreakingNews Center, July 28, 2009). See Innocence.

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