* Eric Zorn takes us through the long, disgusting road that was the wrongful prosecution of Rolando Cruz and Alex Hernandez. The context is a statement by DuPage County State’s Attorney Joe Birkett during Brian Dugan’s trial in the Jeanine Nicarico case that eventually led to Dugan’s death sentence: “We got it right! We got it right, Brian! You raped and killed Jeanine Nicarico!”

Zorn disagrees…

Dugan’s public defender told DuPage County authorities this fact in 1985 after Dugan was arrested and confessed to a strikingly similar rape and murder in LaSalle County. But DuPage didn’t get it. They’d already put Rolando Cruz and Alex Hernandez onto death row for the crime, and so dismissed Dugan as a liar.

A state police investigator subjected Dugan’s claim to extensive scrutiny and came away “totally convinced” he was telling the truth. DuPage didn’t get it.

A series of journalists beginning with Rob Warden, now director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, pored over the evidence and, to a one, concluded that the county had cynically botched the prosecution of Cruz and Hernandez and that Dugan was Jeanine’s killer beyond any doubt. DuPage didn’t get it.

Activists all over the world used the Nicarico case to highlight the dangerous flaws in the capital justice system. DuPage didn’t get it. An assistant Illinois attorney general assigned to contest Cruz’s appeal examined all the evidence in 1992 and resigned rather than participate in what she deemed “this ugly prosecution.” DuPage didn’t get it.

Under the leadership of then-State’s Attorney Jim Ryan, the same Jim Ryan who is now running in the Republican gubernatorial primary, DuPage County continued to brand Dugan a liar and to press the state to execute Cruz and Hernandez. Thursday afternoon, Ryan issued an extraordinary statement acknowledging that he failed to achieve a just outcome in the Cruz-Hernandez case. “And for that I am sorry,” he said.

In 1995, a new round of DNA tests performed at the insistence of Cruz’s defense attorneys excluded Cruz as the source of the semen found inside the victim and put Dugan in the 0.03 percent of the male Caucasian population that could have been the source. DuPage didn’t still didn’t get it, though in attempting to retry Cruz prosecutors began at last admitting that Dugan was “involved” in the crime.

* Meanwhile, all but two Republican candidates for governor support lifting the death penalty moratorium first imposed by Gov. George Ryan or abolishing the death penalty altogether…

Of the seven Republicans, only political consultant turned candidate Dan Proft opposed the death penalty and only former Attorney General Jim Ryan said he’d keep the moratorium in place.

Proft said he would support abolishing the death penalty. “It’s still a fallible justice system presided over fallible human beings,” he said. He would lift the moratorium only because it was, in his view, an illegal act to begin with. As governor, Proft said he’d use his executive power to stay executions or commute death sentences to life in prison if the death penalty wasn’t abolished.

The rest want the moratorium to go away or don’t have an opinion…

“We have rewritten our death penalty statute. The safeguards are in there, so we can lift it now,” said Kirk Dillard, who supports the death penalty. […]

Andy McKenna said he supports the death penalty but wouldn’t say whether he supports or opposes the moratorium, offering only that he’d “review” it if elected.

McKenna doesn’t have many opinions. I talked to him yesterday for a while and got almost nothing out of him on any topic.

* And the SJ-R editorialized yesterday on the subject…

Illinois’ death penalty record from 1976 until 2000 was abysmal: 12 executions, 13 exonerations. The executions stopped in 2000 when Gov. George Ryan declared a moratorium that still stands.

A slew of reforms instituted in the years since now provide safeguards against execution of the innocent. They can’t guarantee that an innocent person will be put to death, but they do guarantee that Illinois’ capital punishment system is more expensive, cumbersome and resource-draining than ever before. Dugan’s attorneys have already indicated they will appeal his sentence, a process that likely will take well over a decade.

We believe the real problem with capital punishment is that it is meted out as an act of revenge, not an act of justice. It is not delivered uniformly according to criminal codes, but by the caprice of individual juries. That’s why Brian Dugan can be killed by the state but the Brown’s Chicken massacre killers and Maurice LaGrone can’t.

Our justice system can never define “the worst of the worst.” It can’t codify revenge. Illinois, which sent 13 innocent people to death row in less than 14 years, can never guarantee it won’t happen again. As our moratorium on executions nears its 10-year anniversary, it’s time for Illinois to recognize this and formally abolish capital punishment.

* And there was reaction from Birkett to Jim Ryan’s apology for repeatedly attempting to execute two innocent men…

In an October 2002 debate, Ryan and Blagojevich were asked to name their biggest political regrets. Ryan did not name any regrets in that forum, not even twice prosecuting Cruz for Nicarico’s murder. […]

On Thursday he said, “If I am elected governor, I will not lift the moratorium on capital punishment until we have created a more limited and accurate system of capital punishment … While Illinois has made significant progress, other reforms have been left on the table, such as a reduction in the number of eligibility factors that trigger the death penalty.”

Ryan’s stance on the moratorium drew condemnation from his one-time top aide in the state’s attorney’s office and the man who successfully prosecuted Dugan, DuPage County State’s Attorney Joe Birkett.

“While I respect Jim Ryan, I strongly disagree with his announcement … that if elected governor, he would not lift the moratorium on the death penalty,” Birkett said. “The moratorium put in place by former Gov. George Ryan is legal fiction. The power to pardon, grant clemency or commutation should be used on a case by case basis as the framers of our constitution intended.”

* Related…

* Did Dugan kill even more? - Birkett wants other unsolved crimes investigated to stop him from offering last-minute info in bid to delay execution

* Timeline of Dugan case

* Ryan says he’s ’sorry’ for sending pair of innocent men to death row

* Cruz ’shocked’ by Ryan’s ’sorry’