'Paying no heed to what's right or wrong'
CRUZ CASE | Attorneys see echoes of Burris' actions on '92 appeal by condemned man
Roland Burris should walk away from Barack Obama's Senate seat, according to an attorney who resigned from handling criminal appeals when Roland Burris was state attorney general after he ignored her plea that he was prosecuting an innocent man.
In 1992, Mary Brigid Kenney resigned because Burris refused to listen to her concerns that the office should back off from prosecuting the appeal of Rolando Cruz for the 1983 abduction, rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico in DuPage County.
(Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times, AP)
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Burris at Senate
THURSDAY: In Springfield, the full Illinois House convenes along with the impeachment panel, where testimony from Burris is expected. In federal court, a decision is expected on whether some of the secret recordings of Blagojevich can be made public.
FRIDAY: In Springfield, the Illinois House could vote on impeaching the governor, depending on what happens Thursday. In Chicago, an Illinois Senate panel considering rules for a trial of Blagojevich meets.
Kenney, an attorney for the Cook County Public Guardian, said Tuesday that Burris' acceptance of Gov. Blagojevich's appointment "brings to mind how, in the Cruz case, Mr. Burris failed to realize the ethical obligations of a criminal prosecutor and how, now he again fails to recognize the difference between right and wrong. . . . There is a cloud over his appointment. He should have declined it."
Ultimately, Cruz was acquitted. By then, DNA evidence linked Brian Dugan to the murder. Dugan, who is serving a life sentence for two other similar murders, is now awaiting trial in that case.
Cruz and a co-defendant, Alejandro Hernandez, were convicted in 1985 of the Nicarico murder, but received new trials after the state Supreme Court ruled they should be tried separately. Both were convicted again and Hernandez was sentenced to 80 years in prison and Cruz was sentenced to death.
The appeal was assigned to Kenney, who examined the case and believed Cruz was innocent and should have a new trial. She asked to meet with Burris, but he refused, she said.
"I wrote very detailed memos," she said. "I was refused access to him. He said it was not his job to place his judgment over a jury. But he missed the question. . . . Cruz did not get a fair trial because the judge did not let the jury hear much of the evidence that corroborated Dugan and exonerated Cruz.
"In accepting this appointment to the Senate, Mr. Burris has done what was good for him, paying no heed to what is right or wrong, just as he did with Rolando Cruz."
Attorney Lawrence Marshall, one of the lawyers who helped obtain Cruz's acquittal in 1995 and who is now a professor at Stanford Law School, said in a separate interview, "Then and now, this is really the same person and the same behavior, which is that -- although I don't think Roland Burris is an evil man -- I do think his career has been about one thing and one only -- the advancement of Roland Burris."
Marshall said that in the Cruz case, Burris "lied to the public . . . and refused to take responsibility one way or another. He came up with a bogus story that it wasn't his job to decide whether to prosecute the appeal. Now, he is acting consistently -- he is saying, 'I don't care. I'm not going to worry about what's right. I'm going to worry about what's best for Roland Burris.'"
A Burris spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.