In a game of political chess, embattled Governor Rod Blagojevich named Roland W. Burris to fill president-Elect Obama’s remaining term as U.S. Senator – an obvious “in your face” move designed to befuddle the Illinois legislature as they continue to debate his impeachment.
There’s something that you should know about Roland W. Burris.
As state Attorney General, Burris sought the death penalty for a man named Rolando Cruz, who 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 (Brian Dugan) 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 at the time and “didn’t want to seem soft on crime.”
"Anybody who understood this case wouldn’t have voted for Burris," Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, told ProPublica. Indeed, Burris lost that race, and two other attempts to become governor.
Burris' role in the Cruz case was "indefensible and in defiance of common sense and common decency," Warden said. "There was obvious evidence that Cruz was innocent." Deputy attorney general Mary Brigid Kenney agreed and eventually resigned rather than continue to prosecute Cruz.
In her resignation letter, Kenney claimed Burris had "seen fit to ignore the evidence in this case." "I cannot sit idly by as this office continues to pursue the unjust prosecution of Rolando Cruz," she wrote. "I realized that I was being asked to help execute an innocent man."
Under Burris’ direction, state prosecutors carried on with the prosecution, even after DNA evidence excluded Cruz as the victim's rapist and linked sex offender Brian Dugan to the crime. Brian Dugan had already confessed to the crime and will (finally) stand trial for the rape and murder next year.
The Illinois Supreme Court reversed Cruz’s conviction and awarded him a new trial – in which he was acquitted. In late 1995, Cruz finally walked free after serving 11 years on death row for a crime he did not commit.
Burris’ ambition was so important that he was willing to send an innocent man to death row to achieve a political goal.
In case you missed it, here it is again – only louder:
Burris’ ambition was so important that he was willing to send an innocent man to death row to achieve a political goal.
What kind of man (in this case I use the term "man" loosely) could do such a thing?
What a sad state we find ourselves in – that this sorry excuse for a man could be appointed to the United States Senate by another sorry excuse for a Governor. God help us.
There’s more - read the full story at: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/16981.html
Update (1/2/2009): After reading a couple of comments on this article – comments that called into question the facts contained in the story, I Googled several terms (including “Rolando Cruz” and "Brian Dugan") and found no other news sources that refute the facts presented in the story. So, although a couple of unnamed individuals questioned Cruz’s innocence and sided with Burris’ actions, all other sources I’ve seen verify the article’s conclusions.