Joe Birkett is thinking of running for Governor.
He’s very, very good to me. Anyone with that much of a sourpuss personality in font of a camera only makes this more fun.
First, we start with his handling of the Nicarico murder case. Eric Zorn will be happy for a Birkett candidacy because it’ll let him dredge up old columns, polish them, and meet a deadline easily.
In September of 2002 he wrote this column about Birkett’s inability to deal with the Nicarico case in an honorable fashion.
He added, “My opponent has no idea what a prosecution looks like.”
Of course, when it comes to Dugan, neither does Birkett.
For his entire six-year tenure as state’s attorney, his office has let the Nicarico case languish officially open and unsolved. After Cruz was acquitted and released from Death Row in late 1995 and charges were dropped against his former co-defendant, Alejandro Hernandez, the logical move was against Dugan, whose story starkly contradicted the version of events that DuPage authorities had been pushing for more than a decade.
But Birkett did not reopen plea negotiations with Dugan, who had offered to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. He has not indicted him, and there are no reports that he has even tried. His office has not even requested to talk to Dugan about the case, according to Dugan’s attorney Tom McCullough.
Instead, Birkett has claimed all along to be waiting on sleuths who are still hard at work gathering evidence against Dugan, whose detailed admissions can’t be used against him because they were part of plea negotiations. “The investigation is very aggressive and has been since Day 1,” he said Monday. He said one full-time investigator, one part-time investigator and a part-time special assistant state’s attorney are on the case.
And since the alleged investigation is always ongoing, Birkett always says that he can’t comment on it or what sort of dead end it will take for him to give up on getting a death sentence and accept Dugan’s guilty plea.
He’s in no hurry. Dugan is already serving life without parole for a similar murder and isn’t going anywhere. And as long as the case remains technically open, Birkett remains able to offer vague insinuations, as he did again Monday, that he doesn’t buy the story that Dugan acted alone and Cruz and his former co-defendants weren’t involved.
He wouldn’t offer a personal opinion on Cruz’s innocence when asked about it at Monday’s news conference, nor would he reveal the substance of any conversations he had with his supervisors and colleagues when he was the lead prosecutor in the case in late 1994 and early 1995. “That’s confidential work product,” he explained.
It’s also another dodge. Madigan may have been standing on a little girl’s grave Monday, but Birkett has been hiding behind her headstone for years.
Two years and what has changed.
That much.
Fun flashback from The Capitol Fax in 2002
A Tiny Taste of Capitol Fax from October 17, 2002:
STATEWIDE STUFF (excerpt) Joe Birkett, then and now.
Chicago Tribune, August 21, 1994: “Last week he formally was named the lead prosecutor in the upcoming third trial of Rolando Cruz.”
Daily Southtown: June 6, 2002: “Birkett says his bosses, not he, led the Cruz trials.”
Chicago Tribune, August 21, 1994: “‘I feel very comfortable taking on this case,’ said Birkett, who will prosecute the case with DuPage Assistant State’s Atty. Barbara Preiner and one other attorney, who has yet to be named.”
Chicago Tribune: October 1, 2002: “I inherited, obviously, a nightmare.”
I visited the grave Monday morning, in part because I never had. After nine years and more than 100 columns about the terrible course justice took after she was abducted from her home about 2 miles from the cemetery, raped and murdered, I had never gone to the place where the enormity of the crime that began it all seems most real.
I visited also in part because this week will mark a major transition point in this case. After Tuesday’s election, no matter what the results, the Jeanine Nicarico saga will pass from current event to history.
For the better part of two decades, Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Ryan has been the subject of much criticism for his prosecution of three innocent men for the crime when he was state’s attorney of DuPage County.
Add to it the shell game he played regarding whether he supports a concealed carry law and the campaign will be a trainwreck from the word go. In 2002 the Trib called him out on his inability to be clear on where he stood on a concealed carry law in Illinois. He was giving non-denials, but at the same time the Illinois State Rifle Association endorsed him while they wouldn’t endorse Jim Ryan-because Ryan didn’t support concealed carry. Concealed carry was opposed in Illinois by about 70% of the population in the last poll I saw on it.
Finally, Birkett is just unlikeable. In one of the most bizarre and bitter concessions during the 2002 cycle, Birkett was on TV in this desperate whiny voice while leaning against a table and said he just called Lisa Madigan and told her congratulations, she was now a Prosecutor. While Keyes has upped the ante on what classlessness is, Birkett still was nasty.
Beyond that night, he ranks up there as one of the most unlikeable candidates for public office I’ve ever watched. Many candidates are obnoxious, but they know how to look on TV. Birkett just sneers all of the time.
So welcome to the race Joe and if I were The Blagorgeous, I’d help fund this guys primary run.
Hiramand Austin Mayor have more