Moments after a clerk announced that jurors Wednesday had condemned Brian Dugan to death for the rape and murder of Jeanine Nicarico, more than a quarter century of weddings interrupted by cemetery visits, of missed graduations, of guilt and anguish, cascaded on the Nicarico family.
Through their tears, they found enough composure to display a gesture of wordless gratitude. They leaned forward and hugged Opal Horton, who escaped Dugan the day he raped and killed her best friend. Then they turned and embraced another Dugan survivor, Sharon Grajek.
Later, speaking with the news media, Patricia Nicarico tried to explain why.
"Having met them and gotten to know them has really been a very special thing for us, and something we will never forget," she said. "We have a bond, and it's not the best kind of a bond to have, but it's a very special bond."
She described the verdict as a relief and added, "We are shedding tears not of sadness, but of joy, but not really very, very joyful because the death sentence is never really a joyful thing. But Brian Dugan is somebody who deserves it, in our minds."
Dugan showed no reaction to the verdict.
"I think he expected it, and it was a DuPage County jury," said Steven Greenberg, one of his defense attorneys. "Our claim during trial was that he suffers from a mental illness, that he is a psychopath, and a psychopath doesn't show emotion."
Judge George Bakalis will hear post-trial motions on Dec. 16 and set an original execution date as required by law. But also required by law is an automatic appeal directly to the Illinois Supreme Court.
Still, the sentence is a major milestone in one of Illinois' most infamous criminal cases, which started when a 10-year-old Naperville-area girl stayed home from school with the flu. Dugan broke into the Nicarico home and kidnapped Jeanine, then brutally raped and murdered her, leaving her body to be found two days later along the Illinois Prairie Path.
In the last 26 years, the case condemned two innocent men to death, then freed them, led to the landmark malfeasance indictments of seven law-enforcement officials who later were acquitted and influenced death-penalty reform.
Dugan first hinted at his involvement in the 1983 crime in late 1985, but he was not charged with the murder until November 2005. He pleaded guilty in July this year, allowing the case to go directly to sentencing, where jurors had only two choices: death or life in prison.
For the last six weeks, jurors have heard details of Dugan's life of crime beginning with petty thefts, proceeding to a series of rapes and assaults on west suburban women and ending with the kidnappings, rapes and murders of not only Jeanine but 7-year-old Melissa Ackerman, of Somonauk, and Donna Schnorr, 27, of Geneva. Dugan was serving two life sentences for those murders.
The defense countered with two weeks of testimony about Dugan's mental deficiencies and with claims that his admission of involvement in the Nicarico crime took two innocent men off death row.
Jurors began deliberating late Tuesday afternoon. At 10 p.m. Bakalis said the jury had flipped a light switch to indicate it had a verdict. But before the verdict could be announced, some members asked for more time to deliberate. Bakalis sequestered them for the night, and they resumed deliberations Wednesday.
After about five more hours of deliberations, the unanimous decision was read aloud.
The defense's arguments appeared to have been given close consideration by at least some members of the jury, who made several requests during deliberations for more information: copies of testimony from mental health experts who studied Dugan and his brain, and transcripts of testimony about Dugan's statements in the 1980s linking him to the Nicarico crime.
"Brian Dugan's initial claims about Nicarico in 1985 helped put the death penalty issue back before the public," Greenberg said, suggesting that although Dugan is a "despicable person," he deserves credit for that. "There are a lot of other people who went free (from death row) because of Brian Dugan and this case."
In 2000, Gov. George Ryan imposed a moratorium on executions, later commuting 171 death sentences.
State's Attorney Joseph Birkett, a leading proponent of the death penalty, said the current "moratorium is fiction, the moratorium is a joke. Gov. Pat Quinn or whoever the next governor is should end it."
Even so, Birkett said that with the required appeals it could be eight years or more before Dugan is executed.
Rolando Cruz, one of two men who spent more than a decade on death row for Nicarico's murder, said he hoped the jury's decision helps bring closure for the victims' families and himself.
"I feel good right now, but it's not a reason to celebrate or reason to jump for joy for anything," he said.
Another man feeling relief was Edward Cisowski, a retired Illinois State Police commander who in 1986 investigated Dugan's claims of involvement in the Nicarico crime. Cisowski came to believe that Dugan was the sole perpetrator, a belief that caused friction with former prosecutors who doubted Dugan's story.
Cisowski said he told Dugan in 1986 that "if you are the one that killed that little girl, I am going to put you on death row."
After the jury fulfilled Cisowski's long-ago promise, he said outside the Wheaton courthouse, "It just took a little longer than I had hoped for."
Tribune reporter Vikki Ortiz Healy contributed to this report. abarnum@tribune.com
