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In February 1985, a Hispanic man from Aurora, Illinois named Rolando Cruz and a co-defendant were tried, wrongfully convicted, and sentenced to death for the 1983 kidnapping, rape, deviant sexual assault and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico in DuPage County Circuit Court despite the fact that the police had no physical evidence linking them to the crime. Cruz was pardoned after more than 12 years in custody. ==Events== On February 25, 1983, 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico (born July 7, 1972) was abducted in broad daylight from her home in Naperville, Illinois. Suffering from the flu, Jeanine was at home alone while her parents were at work and her sisters were at school. Her body was found 2 days later, six miles from her home. She had been raped and beaten to death. Rolando Cruz, a 20-year-old gang member from Aurora, was not initially a person of interest for the crime until he attempted to claim the $10,000 reward for information on the murder with a fabricated story.〔http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=326645〕 Several weeks later, Alejandro Hernandez, a high school dropout from Aurora came forward and said that three people had murdered Jeanine and that he knew two of them, Steven Buckley and "Ricky". Ricky was never found but Buckley's shoes were taken to compare with a print found at the scene and John Gorajczyk, a shoe print examiner in the police crime lab, concluded they didn't match. Gorajczyk later testified that lead prosecutor Thomas Knight told him to "keep his mouth shut" about the Buckley print not matching. Knight then sent the print and boots to the Illinois State Police crime lab who could not find a match so he then sent the boots and prints to an expert in Kansas who also found no match. Finally the print and boots were given to "shoe expert" Louise Robbins, who not only said Buckley's boots matched the print, but that she could tell the height and race of the wearer. Cruz, Hernandez and Buckley were indicted on 8 March, 1984. After Robbins was discredited in 1986, the FBI crime lab conducted its own tests and concluded that Buckley's boot did not match the print.〔 There was enormous public and political pressure on the state attorney's office to solve the highly publicized case and the police and prosecutors became convinced of Cruz's guilt. One of the investigating detectives however was convinced of Cruz's innocence and resigned so he could testify for the defense. Later an Assistant Attorney General, Mary Brigid Kenney, also resigned claiming "I was being asked to help execute an innocent man".〔(Report: Burris Once Drew Criticism for Prosecuting Innocent Man ) Fox News January 02, 2009〕 In 1987 Cruz, along with Alejandro Hernandez and Stephen Buckley, were charged with Jeanine's rape and murder despite a lack of evidence. At trial, two detectives testified that during an interview on May 9, 1983, Cruz had told them that he had had a vision about the Nicarico murder. He allegedly told them that Jeanine's nose had been broken, that she had been hit in the head so hard that a depression was left in the ground where her body was found, that she had been sodomized and that she had been left in a farmer's field, all details that had not been made public. Cruz maintained he had never made the statement, there was no police record of it and it had not been mentioned during the indictment trial three years earlier.〔 Cruz and Hernandez were convicted in a joint trial and sentenced to death. The jury deadlocked on Buckley and he was not retried. The charges against Buckley were dropped on 5 March, 1987. In November 1985, another man, Brian Dugan, was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without parole for two unrelated similar homicides (one a seven-year-old girl) committed in nearby Kane and LaSalle Counties. At the time of his arrest he had also confessed to the Jeanine Nicarico murder but this information was withheld by prosecutors from Cruz's trial. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rolando Cruz case」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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