SYCAMORE – Rolando Cruz twice was sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit, giving away more than 10 years of his life on death row.
He’s still giving. In fact, it’s a common thread in his life.
Cruz, 54, grew up in Aurora, and served more than 12 years behind bars – 12 years, three months, three days and an hour and a half, he’ll tell you – after he first was taken into custody.
He twice was wrongfully convicted of the 1983 rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico, who was abducted from her Naperville home while she was home sick from school.
Before he was imprisoned at age 20, he wanted to be a fender and body man, like his dad.
“My thing wasn’t money,” he said. “I can still work, and I’m blessed,”
Cruz has lived in Sycamore since September 2014 with his wife, Telma.
He received millions in a wrongful conviction settlement with DuPage County, but his family lives in a modest home where he works to help both victims and defendants in criminal cases as a volunteer legal counselor through his business, In Pursuit of Justice.
His feelings about the death penalty aren’t what you might expect from someone whose personal story was one of the key reasons cited by former Gov. George Ryan when he declared a moratorium on executions in Illinois.
With four of his 10 children still 18 or younger, he was drawn to Sycamore because of the school district. Cruz said he likes living in a small, quiet town.
He throws numerous parties for children, most notably after the school year ends. He works full time at the Target Distribution Center in DeKalb, where he racks up a lot of overtime, he said – like it or not.
“I’ve never wanted money,” he said. “I gave away most of my money.”
(Caption: Jo-An Galindo, (left) 37, of Sycamore, Rolando Cruz and Michael Ramirez, (right) 42, of DeKalb talk at Cruz's home in Sycamore on Monday.)
Pursuing justice
Cruz’s conviction resulted from his telling police a fabricated story in hopes of collecting a $10,000 reward for information leading to Nicarico’s killer. He and two other men, Alejandro Hernandez and Stephen Buckley, would be implicated in the crime. Hernandez also would be sentenced to death.
Brian Dugan eventually would confess to the crime, saying he acted alone, which led to Cruz’s first conviction being overturned. But Dugan’s confession was not admissible as evidence in Cruz’s later trials. Cruz later was convicted and sentenced to death a second time.
Cruz finally was freed from prison in November 1995, after he was acquitted in a third trial. After his release, Cruz said he essentially was on tour with politicians for years.
“I guess that’s what you’d call it,” he said. “I felt like I was entertainment for people to come see, like going to the zoo. That brought me back to feeling like I was on death row.”
Cruz spent a lot of time in Springfield and helping with the push for elimination of the death penalty, which began with Ryan’s moratorium in January 2000. Ryan eventually pardoned Cruz, and later commuted the sentences of all Illinois death row inmates to life in prison before he left office in 2003.
In addition to working with death-penalty foes, Cruz also served as a youth advocate for the Jane Addams Hull House Association.
All those demands, all that pressure, led to the demise of his first two marriages. He picked up two DUI convictions.
“I was putting together these kids’ lives, and my life wasn’t together,” Cruz said.
He said he got “nearly every penny” of a $3.5 million settlement with DuPage County, but he wasn’t enamored with the money, or the celebrity status he felt.
“I couldn’t figure out how to balance things, so I kind of ran away from everybody,” he said. Cruz moved to Wisconsin, then to Texas, but he missed his home in Illinois, so he moved in September 2014 to Sycamore.
“I’m very happy here,” he said. “I like to live secluded, but not quite secluded – a small circle.” He said wherever he’s lived, he’s given away his money – sometimes literally giving it away, and sometimes by donating Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas hams, something he’s done for more than a dozen years.
“I gave to other people who needed more than I did, people who have had a tough time in life,” he said.
On Monday afternoon, he was setting up a volleyball net in his yard for the latest of his signature end-of-the-school-year parties, all while he lives on meager means and continues to pay off another settlement – this one from a cash advance lawsuit after he signed on a loan for one of his ex-wives.
Help needed
Cruz said since his exoneration, numerous people have asked him for legal advice, considering he was able to assemble his own defense team, take control and get himself freed.
“I was in 4,473 days, and that’s what I did after the first, maybe, 2½years – we took control, and we made them admit they lied,” he said.
He’s offered counsel to Jo-an Galindo, a 37-year-old family friend who said a Sycamore man stabbed him five times outside a bar in February 2017.
Galindo said Anthony Sosin, 33, of the 800 block of Stevens Avenue in Sycamore, stabbed him twice in the neck, once in his ribs, once in his chest and once in the back of his shoulder behind Hometown Bar, because Galindo casually used a racial slur while making a peace offering at last call. Galindo said that incensed Sosin, who unleashed a wave of racial slurs and threats while they still were in the bar, before they fought outside.
Sosin is expected to be offered a plea deal when he’s back in DeKalb County court May 21. Galindo said he talked to a lawyer about suing Sosin for his hospital bills, which he said cost a little more than $11,000, but that they advised him that Sosin couldn’t pay up if he loses his job.
Cruz looked on solemnly as Galindo explained. He couldn’t argue.
The art of saying no
Cruz said he will say no when it’s warranted.
He’s helped defendants and victims alike, he said, but he’s also been frank with people when, upon examining the facts, he’s determined they’re guilty.
“I’ve been threatened, yelled at and everything else,” he said. “I’ve had many people hate me.” He said many people also have gotten upset with him when they’ve asked him for his stance on the death penalty, and he’s hedged. He was outspoken about wanting Nicarico’s real killer, Dugan, to be sentenced to death. Dugan was sentenced to death in 2009 for the crime, but the sentence was commuted to life in prison when Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation to finally abolish Illinois’ death penalty in 2011.
“I believe in the death penalty,” Cruz said, “but I don’t believe in the implementation of it.”
For instance, he said, James Shaw Jr. would have been fully justified if he’d killed the accused Waffle House shooter, Travis Reinking, in Nashville, Tennessee, if that’s what it came to.
“If he didn’t react, more people would have been slaughtered,” Cruz said. “I’d react, and stop that person by any means necessary, even if it means taking that person’s life.
“That makes me a trier of fact, and I imposed a sentence.”