Dugan sentenced to die in 1983 slaying
WHEATON – A suburban Chicago jury told a convicted murderer Wednesday that he should be executed for the rape and killing of a 10-year-old girl kidnapped from her home 26 years ago – a case that helped lead to landmark death penalty reforms in Illinois, including a moratorium on executions.
Patricia Nicarico gasped and put her hand over her mouth as a bailiff announced that Brian Dugan – who admitted yanking her 10-year-old daughter, Jeanine, out of the family’s suburban Chicago home in 1983 – should die rather than receive another life sentence.
“We are shedding tears of joy,” Patricia Nicarico told reporters. “A death sentence is never really a joyful thing. But Brian Dugan is someone who deserves it.”
Dugan showed no emotion even as Nicarico family members cried behind him, giving each other the thumbs-up sign. The 53-year-old, already serving a life sentence, had been convicted in two other murders, including that of a 7-year-old girl in 1985.
The jury’s decision follows years of court battles in which two other suspects – Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez – were tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and spent more than 10 years in prison before being exonerated. They ultimately were awarded millions of dollars to settle wrongful prosecution lawsuits.
The case was cited by former Gov. George Ryan as one of several that led to his decision to stop all Illinois executions in 2000, as well as clear the state’s death row just before he left office in 2003.
The moratorium remains in place.
Dugan long had offered to plead guilty to Jeanine’s slaying if prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.
Prosecutors steadfastly resisted, and Dugan eventually pleaded guilty in July in hopes of persuading a jury to spare his life and sentence him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
During the trial, DuPage County prosecutors described for jurors the day in 1983 when Jeanine, home sick from school, was abducted from her Naperville home. They presented chilling details, starting with the fingernail marks the struggling child left on a wall as she struggled to free herself from Dugan’s grasp.
Jurors heard how her raped and beaten body was found two days later in a nearby nature preserve, her head still wrapped in the towel and duct tape Dugan had used to blindfold her.
Patricia and Thomas Nicarico described in sometimes tearful testimony the daughter who had been the “joy in our lives,” with the child’s mother telling them she still thinks about how scared and terrified her daughter must have been.
The verdict was a victory for DuPage County State’s Attorney Joseph Birkett, who has been dogged by questions about the office’s handling of the case for years, both for his role in the Cruz case when he was an assistant under then State’s Attorney Jim Ryan and in his current position, which he’s held since 1996.
Birkett has said he only handled prosecutorial duties in the Cruz case before he took over in 1996 and has defended his office over questions about the time it took to indict Dugan.
On Wednesday, Birkett called Dugan a “vicious monster.”
“Brian Dugan is going to where he belongs, to death row, where his fantasies of raping little girls will now turn into a nightmare,” he said, flanked by members of the SClBarico family and members of Dugan’s other two murder victims.
Birkett even took a swipe at the moratorium, calling it a “joke, and said reforms in recent years have improved the death penalty process. He said that at the earliest, after the appeals process runs its course and if the moratorium is lifted, Dugan could be executed in 8-10 years.
A sister of one of Dugan’s victims, nurse Donna Schnorr, said she hoped the state would lift the moratorium.
“People need to pay for their horrific crimes,” Karen Schweitzer said.
Dugan’s attorney, meanwhile, said what others have said for several months: that Dugan deserved to have his life spared because he came forward and confessed, and had been offering to confess for years.
“I don’t expect anyone’s going to put flowers on his gravestone ... but people may look back and say this is the person who changed the way we do capital punishment in Illinois and across the country,” said Steven Greenberg.
