Final arguments near in Dugan sentencing

After five weeks of testimony by dozens of witnesses, a DuPage County jury will hear lawyers' final pitch Tuesday before deciding Brian Dugan's fate.

The triple murderer may face execution if jurors agree he deserves to die for the savage 1983 slaying of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville.

If a unanimous verdict isn't reached, Circuit Judge George Bakalis later will impose a life sentence.

Dugan has been in prison since 1985 serving life terms for two other slayings - those of Donna Schnorr, 27, of Geneva, and 7-year-old Missy Ackerman of Somonauk.

He abducted, raped and killed his three victims, but jurors also were told of a dozen other of his sexual assaults in which the women survived.

Dugan, 53, did not testify before his defense team rested Friday. But the jury heard his words in several hours of taped interviews with law enforcement and mental health experts, dating from the present back to 1985.

Dugan, in a matter-of-fact tone, detailed his violence. The killer said he viewed his victims as objects, rather than real human beings.

He often asked his interviewers to help him understand what was wrong with him. Dugan said his own self-preservation instincts stopped him, though, from seeking psychiatric treatment as a free man.

"I couldn't trust anyone with the knowledge I had of what I had done," he said in a Dec. 5, 1985 interview. "At the time, I thought there was too much to risk."

The seven-woman, five-man jury chose a Naperville Purple Heart veteran as its foreman. The sentencing hearing included 18 days of testimony, plus another two weeks of jury selection.

Prosecutors presented more than 50 witnesses and 400 exhibits, including many graphic crime-scene photos. They argue Dugan is a remorseless psychopath who long ago forfeited his right to live.

The defense team presented several more witnesses to try make its case that mitigating reasons exist to spare Dugan's life. Dugan pleaded guilty, rather than fighting the charges at trial, more than three months ago.

He offered to admit his guilt back in 1985 if prosecutors agreed to spare his life. At the time, two other men were sitting on death row for Jeanine's murder. The defense maintains his cooperation back then was, in part, out of consideration for the wrongly accused men - both of whom were cleared in 1995.

But much of the defense's case involved complex expert testimony regarding functional brain imaging technology as it relates to Dugan's psychopathy.

Dugan scored a 37 out of 40, placing him in the top 99.5 percentile, when the murderer's brain was scanned in psychopathy tests. The average person rates a 4.

Neuroscientist Kent Kiehl said psychopaths such as Dugan share a defect or inactivity in an area of the brain that processes emotion, inhibition, judgment and self-control. Two other defense experts backed up his findings. Scientists haven't figured out what causes psychopathy, be it genetic or societal, but Kiehl said they don't choose to have this brain deficit.

Prosecutors question the reliability of the functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, technology Kiehl uses in his research with high-security prisoners, especially in a courtroom. In rebuttal testimony, Dr. Jonathon Brodie said Friday that the brain is ever-changing and too complex, while the technology still is too emerging, to draw causal conclusions.

"In 10 years, we'll know more about the brain then we do know," the psychiatrist said. "We will have a better handle on what some of these technologies are telling us."

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Video</h2> <!-- Start of Brightcove Player --> <div style="display:none"> </div> <!-- By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at http://corp.brightcove.com/legal/terms_publisher.cfm. --> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script> <object id="myExperience43606475001" class="BrightcoveExperience"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="300" /> <param name="height" value="255" /> <param name="playerID" value="18011347001" /> <param name="publisherID" value="1659832549"/> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="43606475001" /> </object> <!-- End of Brightcove Player --> </ul> <h2>Photo Galleries</h2> <ul class="gallery"> <li><a href="/story/?id=325418">Images of Brian Dugan's victims </a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=325419">Images of Brian Dugan </a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=325420">Images of Nicarico's wrongly accused </a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=325421">Images from Brian Dugan's trial </a></li> </ul> <h2>Related links</h2> <ul class="moreWeb"> <li><a href="/story/?id=308729">Dugan's criminal background</a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=308727">Timeline of Nicarico murder investigation, trials</a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=326654">Brian Dugan's victims</a></li> <h2>Stories</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=326645">Dugan defense team argues early cooperation is mitigation <span class="date">[10/29/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=332175">Judge to decide whether Dugan jury will hear controversial science <span class="date">[10/28/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=331325">Family of slain Naperville girl tells jury of their loss <span class="date">[10/24/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=326645">Cruz: Dugan confessed to save himself <span class="date">[10/02/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=325829">Jury picked to decide Dugan's sentencing <span class="date">[10/02/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=317249">Dugan says he tried to confess in '85 to Nicarico slaying <span class="date">[08/28/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=310026">The statement Brian Dugan wanted to read in court <span class="date">[07/28/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=310014">Nicarico neighbor recalls the search for Jeanine, painful aftermath?<span class="date">[07/28/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=310033">State moratorium on executions - 10 years and counting<span class="date">[07/28/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=310040">A timeline of the Nicarico-Dugan cases<span class="date">[07/28/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=308853">After a lifetime of violence, will jury show Dugan mercy?<span class="date">[07/23/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=308535">Guilty plea expected in Nicarico murder <span class="date">[07/22/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=203555">Did one Chicago-area killer create another? <span class="date">[06/05/08]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=308721">Inside the FBI files of Brian Dugan <span class="date">[01/07/07]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=308724">Grand jury indicts Dugan in Nicarico murder <span class="date">[11/30/05]</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>