Murder in Woodstock

Capital Felony

The medical examiner disagreed with Scott Deojay's account of the injuries Judy Nilan had died from, saying they were "inconsistent with being struck with a motor vehicle." Later, one of the investigators told me, "I saw the woman, she was beaten severely. No way a vehicle did that. It's impossible."

On top of that, one investigator told me later that there was an indication that Judy had been sexually assaulted. Her pants had been pulled down to her ankles. Deojay's DNA had been found in two locations connected to Judy Nilan's body. His explanation that he had to drop her pants in order to tie her up and hoist her up the stairs made little sense to investigators.

As Scott Deojay was held on kidnapping charges, the state police built a case for murder, and eventually linked Deojay (via DNA found during the Judy Nilan investigation) to the 2004 burglary and rape in Plainfield.

The state's attorney's office believed Deojay had stalked Judy Nilan, struck her down with his car, viciously beat her into submission and continued to beat her until she died. It would be a tough case—especially on the family. Yet, as State's Attorney Patricia Froehlich later told me, approaching the case was no different from any one of her other murder cases: "The same way I try to [prosecute] each of them, by looking at the scene, the evidence, the defendant's history and by treating the victim's family with dignity and respect, which means being honest with them, whether it's good news or bad."

What at first seemed like an ideal case for the death penalty, Froehlich took a deep breath, studied the law, and realized it was going to be a tough sell. "As in each of the capital felonies I have handled," she told me later, "I agonized over whether or not the facts fit our very strictly limited death penalty law. There are two possible penalties for capital felony: life without the possibility of release (not parole, release!) or death. Our Supreme Court has very strictly interpreted our death penalty statute. The information from the experts, in this case the medical examiners who conducted the autopsy, led me to conclude that the facts did not fit our death penalty law."

In short, the medical examiner would have to agree that Judy Nilan went through a period of torture and extreme cruelty while she was alive. There was no way, the medical examiner came back and said, to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. It was likely that Judy was alive during the period when most of her injuries had concerned, but there was no conclusive evidence to support such a theory.

Looking at Deojay, sizing him up, Froehlich later explained to me, "Scott Deojay committed at least two very violent crimes against women. He savagely murdered Judy Nilan and approximately two years earlier brutally and repeatedly sexually assaulted another woman in what was supposed to have been the safety of her own home. I can only characterize him as a serious threat to society ... [but] I would rather not give any additional attention to a convicted murderer and rapist but would instead like to pay tribute to the memory of the courageous women he victimized."