Rolando Cruz

• Alibi

● Defendant’s sister testified that defendant was babysitting her children at the time of the crime.

• Confession
• Forensic Evidence
• Informant

• Shoe print

• Not Disclosed
• Valid (Excluded)

Latent fingerprints sufficient for comparison were all found to exclude defendant and co-defendant. It later came to light that boot print evidence, concerning the fact that the print did not in fact match a co-defendant, was not disclosed to the defense.

● Victim’s nose was broken (in taped confession) In statement Cruz gave describing a “vision”: ● the victim’s head was bashed from behind ● the victim’s head formed an imprint in the mud; ● the victim had been raped anally

Q: During that period of time, from the first time that you made contact with Rolando Cruz, up until the time that he has gone through and related the vision to both you and Detective Kurzawa, had you or Detective Kurzawa every related any of the facts that he put in the vision to you? A (Vosburgh): No. We wanted to keep all of those off of the street; any knowledge about the crime scene, we wanted to keep that to ourselves.

And he [Cruz] tells him in this vision, she was anally assaulted. There’s no way to know that information. He knows it because he was there… Who knows that is somebody who was standing right there when that stomping was occurring, and she was being hit, and she was smashed right on the spot. That’s who knows that. But it came to him (Cruz) in a vision.

Non-incarcerated cooperating witness testified: “He told me he wasn’t involved at all with the girl getting killed,” but that “he was there” – and that the body was dumped “off a road, yeah. He didn’t have to tell me because I already read about it,” and he admitted “I already knew that from the news. I knew what road and everything.” First jailhouse informant testified Cruz said he “kind of killed” a girl in Aurora, that “something” had happened and he had left something “stashed” there. Second jailhouse informant claimed that Cruz had confessed to abducting a victim with his codefendants, taking her to a drug dealer’s house in Aurora, overhearing Hernandez sexually assaulting her, the victim fell down wooden stairs, and then they killed her Third jailhouse informant, who testified at the second trial, said that defendant admitted that he, Hernandez and “someone named Dugan” burglarized a home, found a young girl inside, took her in the back seat of a car to a lightly wooded area, raped her, and then killed her outside the car by hitting her on the head with a crowbar.

First jailhouse informant denied receiving any preferential sentencing in return for his testimony, yet he conceded that he had received two five-year concurrent sentences for two burglary charges and numerous other burglary charges were “possibly” dropped less than two weeks after he reported his conversation with defendant to authorities. As for second jailhouse informant, evidence of his convictions and psychiatric treatment was admitted, but evidence that his offenses involved the theft of human body parts was excluded. Third jailhouse informant contacted State while his own appeal was pending. He wrote a letter to the Attorney General stating that he had information about eight death row inmates’ cases, including the defendant’s. He wrote, “[T]hese people have told me what happened in their cases, although most of them will not get a new trial, but one may never know.” He denied telling other inmates that he would “get time” off for informing on Cruz. He agreed that, on his resentencing, he would like the judge to be aware that he had cooperated in defendant’s case. THe denied, however, being offered any promises of leniency in exchange for testimony. An Assistant State’s Attorney would later testify on his behalf at the resentencing hearing, saying that he had “voluntarily provided testimony in the trial of Rolando Cruz” and was cooperative.

• Bruton
• Prosecutorial Misconduct

• Bruton
• Prosecutorial Misconduct
• State Law Evidence Claim

• G

People v. Cruz, 521 N.E.2d 18 (Ill. 1988)
Illinois v. Cruz, 488 U.S. 869 (1988)
People v. Cruz, 1992 WL 356036 (Ill. Dec. 4, 1992)
People v. Cruz, 643 N.E.2d 636 (Ill. 1994)