Judge declares what Dugan jury can hear
A DuPage County jury that will decide this fall whether Brian Dugan lives or dies for Jeanine Nicarico's murder will be clued in on some of the legal saga's history.
But Circuit Judge George Bakalis made it clear Thursday he will not allow the defense team to put the prosecution on trial for its predecessors' errors in an investigation that led to the conviction and eventual exoneration of three other men.
"The jury can't be totally in the dark," Bakalis said.
Dugan pleaded guilty Tuesday to the Feb. 25, 1983, murder of the 10-year-old Jeanine, who was abducted from her home near Naperville, sexually assaulted and fatally bludgeoned. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against the 52-year-old former Aurora man, who has been serving two life prison terms since late 1985 for two later murders and other sex attacks.
It was back then that Dugan first offered to confess to killing Jeanine if his life was spared. Prosecutors refused, but Dugan did get a deal for the July 1984 murder of 27-year-old Geneva nurse Donna Schnorr of Kane County and 7-year-old Melissa Ackerman of Somonauk, murdered in June 1985, in LaSalle County.
Bakalis granted a defense request Thursday to allow Dugan's attorneys to depose Kane County State's Attorney John Barsanti and attorney Gary Peterlin, the former LaSalle County lead prosecutor. Steven Greenberg, the lead Dugan defense attorney, said both men declined his requests to tell him what they know of the 1985 plea talks.
At issue is Dugan's motivation for coming clean.
State's Attorney Joseph Birkett said Dugan was just trying "to save his own neck" with the hope he'd get a life sentence rather than death if he helped authorities close the books on the two later murders. But the defense maintains Dugan wanted to try to save the lives of the wrongly accused men, two of whom faced possible execution before their 1995 exonerations.
For the first time, Greenberg revealed Dugan even penned a handwritten confession back then detailing Jeanine's murder in case anything ever happened to him. He said Dugan also offered to take a lie-detector test, truth serum or undergo hypnosis.
Barsanti previously told the Daily Herald he talked to Dugan only about Schnorr. He said Dugan described the nurse's murder in a matter-of-fact, unemotional tone as if "swatting a fly."
But Greenberg argues what Barsanti and Peterlin recall of that time may be important mitigating evidence. Greenberg said if it wasn't for Dugan's confession in the Schnorr case, Kane County officials may not have ever solved it due to scant evidence.
"The state wants to ignore everything that happened in the past and turn the clock back to 1983," Greenberg said. "The jury needs to know this man (Dugan) stood there 25 years ago and said, 'I did this (Nicarico) crime.' But no one believed him. They called him a liar. We need to be able to tell the whole story."
Seven DuPage County law enforcement officials were indicted but cleared in 1999 of fabricating evidence against Rolando Cruz, one of the wrongly accused men. Bakalis is not expected to allow that testimony, or any regarding the lawsuits and politics behind the case, which Greenberg said he won't pursue anyway.
A pool of an estimated 150 potential jurors is expected to be called Sept. 18 to the Wheaton courthouse to fill out a lengthy questionnaire before lawyers the following week begin selecting the 12-member panel and a handful of alternates.