Wrongful conviction center of NIU panel

DeKALB – Juan Rivera Jr. said he had to fight for his shoes, his food and even his virginity during the 19 years he spent in prison wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl.

But he said he never lost himself.

“I was in a place that literally is hell, but I still came out not being bitter,” Rivera said. “I always looked to the future.”

Nearly three months after his release, he and others connected to the case shared their experience during a discussion called the “Innocence Panel” on Tuesday at the Northern Illinois University College of Law.

Rivera, who was 19 at the time he was convicted of the 1992 murder of Holly Staker, walked free from the Illinois Department of Corrections on Jan. 6 after DNA evidence helped prove his innocence.

Jane Raley, senior staff attorney for Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, started looking at Rivera’s case in 2003. It took nine years, 30 law students, nine lawyers and countless experts to set Rivera free, she said.

“It’s very, very difficult to unravel a wrongful conviction. It takes a village,” she said.

The Innocence Panel, hosted by the NIU College of Law’s Criminal Law Society, included Appellate Justice Susan F. Hutchinson of the Illinois Appellate Court, Second District and NIU Law alumna Stacey Mandell, senior law clerk to Justice Hutchinson.

Rivera’s case was tried three times before he was exonerated. A man in the Lake County Jail, who was a suspect in the case, was the first person to point the finger at Rivera, who was in police custody at the time for a property crime.

When police started questioning him, he claimed to be at a party across the street from the crime scene but wasn’t. Raley said he got so deep into the lie that he couldn’t get out of it.

Rivera was interrogated for four days. Prior to confessing, 10 officers spent 26 hours interrogating him.

Raley said his clothes were soaked because he had been crying, and he had a psychotic episode while police were preparing his statement.

Rivera said he blacked out and woke up in the fetal position.

He compared the experience to childhood when a sibling accuses you of doing something you didn’t do.

“How do you feel about a minute accusation?” he said. “As long as they beat you up verbally, you’ll say anything.”

Rivera’s confession had the telltale signs of a false confession because it happened at midnight, was mostly inaccurate and contained no original information police already didn’t know. He was also reading at a third-grade level and his parents spoke Spanish at home, Raley added.

Hutchinson, who authored Rivera’s second conviction, said factors such as poor DNA samples and some trial court errors in the first case contributed to his conviction.

Mandell said she reviewed 90 cases from across the country where individuals were exonerated. She said the circumstances in Rivera’s case were unique.

“No other individual had been convicted by jury when presented with nonmatch DNA,” she said. “They were either acquitted or the case was dropped.”

Advances had been made in DNA testing by the time Rivera’s case was brought to Raley’s attention. Before, sperm DNA was too inconclusive to determine because it was overwhelmed with the victim’s blood.

After sending the swabs to a lab in California, they determined that Rivera’s DNA profile didn’t match that on the swabs.

“I thought the case is over. God forbid an innocent man be sitting in prison,” Raley said.

But it took another year before his case was awarded a third trial. She said the Lake County jury was faced with Rivera’s confession on one hand, and exonerating DNA on the other. The jury deliberated for four days before he was found not guilty.

“I’m glad I am home,” he said. “I try to teach others that life starts when you say it starts, not when they take it from you.”