Murder of Jeanine Nicarico

The Jeanine Nicarico murder case was a complex and influential homicide investigation and prosecution in which two men, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez, both Latinos, were wrongfully convicted of abduction, rape and murder in 1985 in DuPage County, Illinois. They were both sentenced to death. The case was scrutinized during appeals for being weak in evidence.

After appeals, one man was acquitted in 1995 at his third trial at which a witness recanted previous testimony and new DNA evidence was introduced; the second man, already serving time after being twice convicted, had his charges dismissed by the Illinois State's Attorney. Because of the notoriety of the case and the possibility at one point that two innocent men would have been executed, it was an influence on Governor George H. Ryan's decision in 2000 to impose a death penalty moratorium in the state.

The state indicted seven law enforcement officials for wrongful prosecution of the Nicarico case, saying they had illegally conspired against Cruz in an effort to convict him. The three prosecutors and four sheriff's deputies were ultimately acquitted in 1999.

In 2005, serial killer Brian Dugan was indicted on charges for the crimes against Nicarico. He entered a plea of guilty in September 2009 to the murder of Nicarico after having previously confessed to the crime. He was already serving a life sentence on two other, unrelated rape and murder charges, one of a 27-year-old woman and seven-year-old girl Melissa Ackerman from Somonauk, Illinois (another girl had escaped at the time.) On November 11, 2009, after deliberating about 10 hours over two days, a DuPage County jury sentenced Brian Dugan to death for the rape and murder of Jeanine Nicarico 26 years earlier. Dugan's sentence was commuted to life in prison after Illinois passed a law in 2011 abolishing the death penalty.