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Reply #48: Anyone who persues the death penalty when they have reason to believe the person may be innocent [View All]

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depakid Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jan-05-09 06:44 PM
Response to Reply #25
48. Anyone who persues the death penalty when they have reason to believe the person may be innocent
-for purposes of self-aggrandizement in order to further his career, is crooked to the bone.

While state attorney general in 1992, Burris aggressively sought the death penalty for Rolando Cruz, who twice was convicted of raping and murdering a 10-year-old girl in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. The crime took place in 1983.

But by 1992, another man had confessed to the crime, and Burris' own deputy attorney general was pleading with Burris to drop the case, then on appeal before the Illinois Supreme Court.

Burris refused. He was running for governor.

That deputy has a lot to say about the case:

Deputy attorney general Mary Brigid Kenney agreed and eventually resigned rather than continue to prosecute Cruz.

Once Burris assigned Kenney to the case in 1991, she became convinced that Cruz was innocent, a victim of what she believed was prosecutorial misconduct. She sent Burris a memo reporting that the jury convicted Cruz without knowing that Brian Dugan, a repeat sex offender and murderer, had confessed to the crime. Burris never met with Kenney to discuss a new trial for Cruz, Kenney told ProPublica.

"This is something the attorney general should have been concerned about," Kenney, now an assistant public guardian in Cook County, said in an interview. "I knew the prosecutor's job was not merely to secure conviction but to ensure justice was done."

Kenney was not alone in her beliefs. Prior to Cruz's 1985 trial, the lead detective in the case resigned in protest over prosecutors' handling of the case, according to news reports at the time.

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/01/burris_wanted_death_penalty_fo.php


With any luck, this losers career will now be over once and for all.
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