In the 15 years of Rolando Cruz’s odyssey through the criminal justice system, one of the most dubious and contentious pieces of evidence against him was the “vision statement.”
It was a recollection Cruz allegedly made to investigators in the 1983 abduction, rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville, in which he purportedly told of a dream that included details known only to investigators or those who committed the crime.
But the statement always was shrouded in suspicion: The detectives who said Cruz made the statement did not make an official report of it and never wrote it down. The first official version of it surfaced about 10 days before Cruz’s first trial, and even prosecutors said they had never heard about it until a Christmas party a few days earlier.
A DuPage judge threw out the statement–and the death penalty conviction against Cruz–in November 1995, suggesting the vision statement had been concocted.
Whether the detectives and prosecutors fabricated the statement is at the center of the case against four DuPage County sheriff’s officers and three former prosecutors indicted in 1996 for their roles in the Cruz investigation.
Now the case is taking another dramatic twist: Former grand jurors who presided over the Cruz case in 1983 and 1984 say Cruz did indeed tell them about the vision. But their recollections are murky and raise many questions.
In sworn statements obtained by the Tribune, five of the 23 former grand jurors say they remember Cruz discussing the vision statement but cannot recall exactly how, where–or when–he did so.
“He had a vision that he seen (sic) the girl killed and all,” former grand juror Philip Eorio stated in documents filed Monday in DuPage County Circuit Court. “He was telling us that.”
Former grand juror Dale Barry, a retired financial supervisor for AT&T, said Cruz told grand jurors ” . . . that he told the detectives, please, please don’t show me a picture of a little girl, because I had a dream that there is a little girl, and her head is bashed in.
“He voluntarily gave us this information,” Barry added in the statement. “It was no question to even ask him, no question alluding to this. He voluntarily told us.”
Three other former grand jurors agreed. Four of them made their statements to James Sotos, an attorney representing DuPage County in lawsuits stemming from the Cruz criminal case, and a court reporter, during independent interviews in March and April. Attorneys for the seven defendants filed the transcripts in pre-trial documents.
Some of the five grand jurors suggested that Cruz spoke about the vision statement during a break in formal proceedings. There is no record of Cruz testifying about the vision statement before the grand jury.
Cruz’s attorney, Thomas Breen, dismissed the statements’ validity and alleged they were the product of overzealous defense attorneys.
“Just when you thought that Cruz’s accusers have gone as far as anybody could possibly go, they just go another step farther,” Breen said. “If anything, the absurdity of these grand jurors’ statements considering all the evidence that we know does not reflect unfavorably on Cruz. It reflects unfavorably on the attorneys defending his accusers.”
Breen said the new statements are “strategic evidence that can only backfire on those who are going to propose it in court.”
Breen questioned the timing of the five jurors’ revelations–14 years after Cruz’s indictment. Breen also contended that if Cruz had made a vision statement to grand jurors, even in an informal setting as suggested by some grand jurors, someone would have asked follow-up questions on the record.
“The most important thing,” Breen added, “is the prosecutors (Thomas Knight and Patrick King, who were indicted in the Cruz case) were in the grand jury and they have always testified that they never heard anything about a dream or a vision statement prior to a Christmas party in 1984.”
Charles J. Parker of Lombard sparked the effort to contact other grand jurors. Parker, 55, said in his sworn statement that he contacted the DuPage County sheriff’s office in June 1996, because “just from reading the media, the news,” he realized “there was some discrepancy as to this testimony that was given by Mr. Cruz in regards to this dream and vision that he had.”
But Parker and others are unable to specify exactly when they believe Cruz volunteered the information. Cruz has denied making the statement.
“Maybe the conclusions were drawn not during the testimony,” Parker said in his statement to sheriff’s investigators on June 29, 1996. “See, I was trying to remember.”
Parker and the other four grand jurors could not be reached for comment Monday.
Breen suggested the jurors were “intentionally confused.” But Sotos said the five grand jurors “are very believable.”
He added that the grand jurors may have waited to step forward because they perceived the vision statement as a somewhat minor element in a series of statements and counter-statements, lies and facts they heard in nearly a year and a half of deliberations.
“They’re not lying,” Sotos said. “They’ve got no reason to lie.”
Sotos said the specifics of when Cruz allegedly made the vision statement to grand jurors may not matter. The critical aspect of the jurors’ recollections is that the vision statement may have been bandied about as early as May 1983, he said, while special prosecutors allege that the detectives did not concoct the story until January 1984.
Sotos directed private investigators to contact other grand jurors after he read Parker’s statement, which was filed with the sheriff’s office–ironically with one of the detectives now indicted in the Cruz case.
The investigators began talking with those grand jurors in late 1997, Sotos said. Two of the 23 grand jurors were deceased. One refused to talk; investigators were unable to contact another.
A total of 14 could not recall a vision statement or recalled a reference to a vision statement but could not specify where they had heard it, Sotos said.
Parker already had given his statement, and the remaining four were interviewed in March and April. When asked about specifics of the vision statement, one grand juror, architect Wayne Marth, implied Cruz had told jurors about it–not prosecutors.
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