Object lessons in elusive justice

Two terrible legal cases.

One, at last, now just awaiting its postscript. The second about to enter what could be its long-, long-awaited final chapter.

Both with a sobering message about the search for justice.

Oh, indeed there are many observations to be shared between the trial of Brian Dugan, averted with his guilty plea last week after 26 years of uncertainty, and that of James Degorski, set to begin Thursday after a crime more than a decade and a half behind us. That justice in our time is far from swift, for instance. That it is incredibly expensive and can take an unimaginable toll on the families and friends who yearn so long to see its day arrive.

And another that cannot be ignored: how terribly elusive it is.

Both the mysteries of Jeanine Nicarico's killer and the Brown's Chicken case were just that, mysteries, for many years before these paths were set.

In the Nicarico case, so certain were police and prosecutors that they had the right culprits that they put two men on Death Row and undertook three separate trials before at last finding the course that led to last week's confession by Dugan.

In Brown's, the investigation took authorities down countless false routes before, as former Palatine Police Chief Jerry Bratcher predicted, "one phone call" came to set the case on its ultimate course focusing on Juan Luna, who was convicted in 2007, and Degorski, for whose trial jury selection begins Thursday.

But at least these cases found an ultimate course. As Daily Herald staff writer Jamie Sotonoff reported this week, the case of the 1982 Tylenol killings in the Northwest suburbs appears no closer to a solution today than it was decades ago - despite a federal raid on a possible suspect's apartment just six months ago.

Thankfully, as all these cases show, we persist. Even when the call came in pointing toward the eventual prime suspects, the Palatine Police Department had officers working full-time on the Brown's Chicken case. The FBI reiterated this week that a task force including investigators from Arlington Heights, Elk Grove Village, Schaumburg, Lombard and Chicago continues to work on the Tylenol case full-time.

And the importance of such persistence can't be overstated, not just in terms of families' search for closure or the need to punish wrongdoers but also in terms of our simple need to know the truth. In all these cases and so many more, investigations have taken frequent wrong turns.

Indeed, who knows what turns may yet remain in the case of Degorski, who remains under the presumption of innocence.

The only thing we can be sure of is that we must be skeptical of our early suspicions and willing sometimes to wait, and work, many long, slow years for true justice.