A LITTLE LATE...AND A LITTLE DEEP

The October 30th, page 8 Chicago Tribune story "Lawyer details Dugan's Is mention of Nicarico", was easy to miss but hard to forget if not overlooked. It describes LaSalle County Public Defender George Mueller's July 5, 1985, encounter with Brian Dugan concerning the Melissa Ackerman murder which Dugan pleaded guilty to that November, earning himself a life sentence. Dugan offered his first confession of his guilt in the 1983 murder of Jeanine Nicarico and added that the two street punks, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez, who DuPage prosecutors had railroaded to a death sentence four months earlier, were, in fact, innocent.

The stunned rookie defendant advocate realized he needed to intervene on behalf of the two doomed men. DuPage county prosecutors were not impressed. They had two notches prepared for their prosecutorial guns and weren't about to let the truth get in their way. It took another ten years and four months of mental torture for the two men to be exonerated of the Nicarico murder and another ten years after that for Dugan to finally be indicted. Four years later, Dugan awaits the verdict of life or death as DuPage prosecutors continue their twenty-six year saga to kill someone for this horrible crime.

The article was great. Too bad it wasn't featured on page 1...twenty-four years and three months ago.