Dugan's defense team wants Cruz on the stand

Rolando Cruz lost a decade of his life in prison before being exonerated of the 1983 murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville.

Years later, as the real killer is about to face a jury that will decide if he lives or dies, Cruz may take the stand - this time as a defense witness rather than defendant.

Cruz said the Dugan defense team has subpoenaed him to testify in the upcoming death penalty sentencing hearing.

"I don't hate Brian Dugan. I hate what he did," said Cruz, 46, in a Tuesday telephone interview. "It was the police and prosecution who screwed me over. What Dugan did, he did to the Nicaricos and society."

He added: "My purpose of going there is not to ascertain the death penalty for him. You have the jury and the judge for that. What I'm looking for, is closure."

Dugan, 52, has been serving two life prison terms since his Nov. 19, 1985, guilty plea for two later murders. It was during those plea talks that Dugan first offered to admit guilt in Jeanine's slaying, but only if prosecutors took the death penalty off the table. They refused then, and their successors still do now.

So Dugan took a gamble in a July 28 guilty plea with the hope a jury will show him mercy and spare his life because he accepted responsibility.

Dugan said in two written statements obtained by the Daily Herald that he long ago offered to confess to clear the other men wrongly convicted in the case. Those men - Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez - endured multiple trials, death sentences and about a decade in prison before their exonerations. A third man, Stephen Buckley, was never retried after his first trial ended in a hung jury.

The exonerations led to the indictment of seven former DuPage County law enforcement officials who, in the summer of 1999, were found innocent of conspiring to frame Cruz.

Prosecutors indicted Dugan in November 2005 after citing, in part, improved DNA evidence that they said linked him to the little girl's sexual assault. They argue Dugan's real motivation for his long-ago admission was to save his own neck, not to help Cruz and the others.

Cruz said he agrees. So, the defense's decision to call him as a witness also is a gamble.

A pool of potential jurors are due Friday at the DuPage County courthouse to fill out a questionnaire. Lawyers begin jury selection Tuesday, Sept. 22. The sentencing hearing is expected to last several weeks.