Dugan jury pool summoned to court, briefed on case

Amid the sea of potential jurors summoned Friday to the DuPage County courthouse were the 12 people who will decide Brian Dugan's fate.

The future jurors will be asked to weigh in on the final chapter of a sad legal saga sparked more than 26 years ago when a dimpled, brown-eyed child named Jeanine was abducted from her home, near Naperville, sexually assaulted and murdered.

The 10-year-old girl's parents, Patricia and Tom Nicarico, traveled from their home in South Carolina to bear witness. They sat Friday in the same courtroom where, nearly 14 years earlier, a judge acquitted Rolando Cruz of the murder during a third trial.

The couple declined to comment, other than to say they will be attend each day of the lengthy proceedings.

Dugan, 52, pleaded guilty July 28 to killing the youngest of their three daughters. So, the jury will be impaneled to rule on an appropriate punishment - life in prison or death.

From the moment they walked into the packed courtroom, the panelists clearly sensed the enormity of the task that lies ahead. Most remained stone-faced. Others nodded their heads in recognition of the case.

Some grimaced and rubbed their temples. A few women appeared tearful.

The killer, dressed in a powder blue long-sleeved shirt and brown slacks, will try to convince his jury to spare his life because he accepted responsibility and, perhaps, showed some remorse through his admission of guilt. Prosecutors argue Dugan long ago forfeited his right to live. He has been serving two life prison terms since his Nov. 19, 1985, guilty plea for two later sex slayings - Donna Schnorr, 27, a Geneva nurse; and 7-year-old Melissa Ackerman of Somonauk.

Circuit Judge George Bakalis gave the 140 people in the packed courtroom a brief factual summary of the Nicarico case. Before sending them on their way, Bakalis warned panelists to avoid Dugan media reports. Afterward, the group was taken back down to the jury commission room, where each member filled out a thick questionnaire and reviewed a witness list to determine whether they knew anyone involved in the case.

Lawyers also argued some last-minute motions.

Actual jury selection begins Tuesday, and is expected to last about two weeks. That's followed by the eligibility and sentencing phases, which should take a month as prosecutors detail Dugan's lifetime of violence - which includes arsons, batteries, burglaries, thefts, several sexual assaults and the three murders of Jeanine, Donna and Melissa.

It was during those 1985 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 do now.

Dugan argues he long ago offered to confess to clear other wrongly convicted 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 1999, were found innocent of conspiring to frame Cruz.

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

Ultimately, the jury decides with whom the truth lies.