Former death row inmate Rolando Cruz has rescheduled his appearance at the Cornell Law School for Thursday, Feb. 19, at 2 p.m. in Room G90 of Myron Taylor Hall.

Cruz's visit to Cornell is sponsored by the Law School's Death Penalty Project and is free and open to the public.

Cruz was scheduled to speak last week but had to postpone his appearance because of travel delays.

Cruz spent 11 years on death row in Illinois and had two murder convictions overturned before he was acquitted at his third trial.

He and two other men were charged with the murder of a 10-year-old DuPage County (Ill.) girl, Jeanine Nicarico, in 1985; Cruz and one other man were convicted and sentenced to death. Shortly thereafter, another man, Brian Dugan, was arrested and charged in a similar case and subsequently admitted to three murders, including that of Nicarico. Dugan never formally confessed to the Nicarico killing, because prosecutors were unwilling to drop the death penalty as punishment for the crime.

The convictions of Cruz and his co-defendant were overturned in 1988 because of trial error. The two were then retried, convicted and sentenced to death again. In 1994, the second conviction was overturned and a third trial was ordered. During that 1995 trial, a key state witness admitted having perjured himself at the previous trials, and the government's case against Cruz collapsed. After Cruz was acquitted, the state dropped all charges against his co-defendant as well.

Cruz's visit to Cornell follows the November visit, also sponsored by the Cornell Death Penalty Project, of the death penalty-phase attorneys for Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the Oklahoma City bombing.