BY KRISTIN MERIAM
CHICAGO - "Let us not forget, Rolando Cruz was sentenced to be strapped to a gurney and delivered a lethal injection because of perjured testimony," said Lawrence Marshall, a defense lawyer for Cruz.
On November 3, after twelve years on death row, Cruz was finally found not guilty of the brutal 1983 rape and murder of a ten-year-old Naperville, Illinois, girl.
Although no physical evidence or eyewitness linked Cruz to the crime, he was twice convicted based on a so-called "vision statement." DuPage County sheriff's detectives Thomas Vosburgh and Dennis Kurzawa claimed Cruz told them in 1983 of a vision he'd had, describing details of the murder that were not publicly known. The two did not make a report of the statement, and it was not disclosed to the defense until nineteen months later. Sheriff's Lt. James Montesano corroborated their story in a pre-trial hearing in August this year. On November 3, however, Montesano stunned the court by admitting he'd lied.
"Did Cruz ever make the dream statement?" asked Judge Ronald Mehling in court. "I don't think I have to answer that because I'm going to enter a finding of not guilty." The defense never presented their case because Mehling ruled the prosecution did not meet the burden of proof.
While the prosecution relentlessly pursued their frame- up of Cruz and co-defendant Alejandro Hernandez they disregarded the likely killer. In 1985 Brian Dugan, who was serving a life sentence for the murders of a seven-year-old girl and a woman, confessed to the Naperville murder and said he acted alone. This year new DNA evidence was produced which strongly links Dugan to the girl's rape and excludes both Cruz and Hernandez.
"I never believed they did it. We never had the evidence," said the arresting officer, former DuPage County sheriff's deputy John Sam. Sam quit his job in 1984 rather than continue the frame-up. Former state assistant attorney general Mary Brigid Kenney also resigned over the case. "I am so firmly convinced Dugan alone killed this girl," she said.
The prosecutors, however, are not dropping their case against Hernandez. DuPage County state's attorney Anthony Pecarelli says the Cruz verdict will have "no impact whatsoever" on Hernandez's upcoming trial, his fourth in the case. Ten years after he confessed to the crime, Dugan has yet to be charged.