Till Justice Is Done

This is the story of the Coalition for Justice, a group of Latino and religious advocates, who came together to promote the innocence of two men they believed had been erroneously and repeatedly convicted of a terrible crime. In February of 1983, Jeanine Nicarico, a ten-year-old from the western suburbs of Chicago, was abducted from her home, raped, and murdered. A year later, Rolando Cruz, Alejandro "Alex" Hernandez and Stephen Buckley were indicted despite the lack of physical evidence against them. In February of 1985, jurors deadlocked on Buckley and sentenced the two Latinos to death. Months later, while confessing to two unrelated murders, a convicted sex offender by the name of Brian Dugan acknowledged killing Jeanine Nicarico. Notwithstanding Dugan's confession, Cruz and Hernandez spent more than ten years in prison before being released in November of 1995. However, it took more than a decade and a half for the DuPage County criminal justice system to acknowledge Dugan as a credible suspect. In 2009, he was finally tried, convicted and sentenced to death. But in 2011, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed a bill abolishing the death penalty and Dugan's sentence was commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole.