"The duty of the prosecutor is to seek justice, not merely to convict.”

1983. Little girl murdered. Perps are death penalty poster boys.
However,

[John] Sam, the son of a Cicero police officer, was a DuPage County sheriff's detective who interviewed Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez and believed early on that they did not commit the crime. He didn't change his mind after they were indicted in March 1984.In the fall of that year, he recalled, he was called to then-Sheriff Richard Doria's office and told to stay out of the Nicarico investigation. He disagreed, then quit.

1985. Poster boys get convicted, sentenced to death.

1985. Some guy named Brian Dugan, having pled guilty to two unrelated murders, implicates himself in this murder and agrees to speak officially if granted immunity from the death penalty. Prosecutors refuse the offer.

1989. Appeals court reverses on a technicality; poster boys should have been tried separately. (all reversals are technicalities, right?)

1990-1991. Perps reconvicted.
However,

Mary Brigid Kenney's first assignment as an Illinois assistant attorney general was to prepare written and oral arguments defending Rolando Cruz's conviction and death sentence. She examined the case, found what she considered numerous errors in the investigation and prosecution and urged then-Illinois Atty. Gen. Roland Burris to "confess error" and reconsider his position. She believed Brian Dugan had acted alone in the attack. That was in February 1992. Burris responded by taking her off the case. She resigned March 5, 1992, and wrote a memo to Burris, which stated, in part: "I was being asked to help execute an innocent man. Unfortunately, you have seen fit to ignore the evidence in this case."

1994-1995. Perps cases reversed again, one on the technicality that he should have been allowed to point out that somebody else's DNA (Brian Dugan's) was found on the body.

1995. First poster boy acquitted; second poster boy released for "insufficient evidence."

1996. Four cops, three DA's indicted for lying and concealing evidence in the case.

1999. Cops, DA's acquitted

2005. Well-known perp (Brian Dugan) indicted, 20 years after he told DAs and police he'd speak about the crime if the death penalty was taken off the table.

Thank you, former Detective John Sam.
Thank you, former AG Mary Kenney.

FOAD,
DA Patrick King, Jr.
DA Thomas L. Knight
DA Robert K. Kilander (now Chief Judge of the jurisdiction!)
(and you wonder why this is just so much BS)
and
Lt. James T. Montesano
Lt. Robert L. Winkler
Det. Dennis Kurzawa
Det. Thomas E. Vosburgh

Jack