March 21--Authorities in Lake County have reached a $20 million settlement with a man who spent two decades in prison before he was cleared by DNA of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in Waukegan in 1992, bringing a close to one of the county's most controversial cases.
The settlement made with the city of Waukegan and other governmental bodies, including Lake County and the state, is one of the largest individual settlements in a wrongful conviction case. While other cases have settled for more money, they had multiple defendants; the so-called Ford Heights Four, who were convicted of a double murder, settled with Cook County in the mid-1990s for $36 million, for instance.
"This will go a long way towards compensating Juan Rivera for spending 20 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit," Steve Art, an attorney at the Loevy Loevy law firm and one of Rivera's lawyers, said Friday. "It demonstrates that there was serious alleged misconduct and that this case was very winnable for Mr. Rivera at trial. It also shows taxpayers in Lake County that there's a serious price to pay when police and other actors in the criminal justice system violate individual rights."
Waukegan Mayor Wayne Motley confirmed the settlement. Waukegan's share of the settlement, $7.5 million, is the largest in the case. The mayor said insurance will cover only part of its share of the settlement, meaning taxpayers may have to foot some of the bill.
Motley also lashed out at other municipalities in the case. Court documents showed that the county, the state and others agreed to settle before Waukegan, leaving the city out on a limb.
"It was very inappropriate for them to do what they did. I was not happy," the mayor said.
As part of the settlement, none of the defendants admit wrongdoing. The law enforcement officers sued in the case are being dismissed as defendants and won't have to pay damages.
Attorney James Sotos, who has represented Lake County, said the settlement made financial sense considering the risks to the county of a substantial judgment. He said the county did not have insurance that would cover the case and will have to pay its share of the settlement -- $3.5 million.
"It was a good settlement given the costs and risks of litigation," Sotos said.
Rivera's case is one of five Lake County murder or rape prosecutions that have imploded in the last five years under the weight of DNA evidence indicating prosecutors had put an innocent man behind bars. Just last week, State's Attorney Mike Nerheim agreed to free Angel Gonzalez, who had spent close to 20 years in prison for a 1994 rape and abduction that DNA showed he did not commit.
The men, most of whom were prosecuted during the 22-year tenure of State's Attorney Michael Waller, spent a combined 80 years in jail or prison before they were cleared. During Waller's service, his prosecutors developed an unflattering national reputation for going to great lengths to undermine the importance of DNA evidence.
Waller retired in 2012; Nerheim took office promising reform.
Exonerations are typically followed by lawsuits against authorities, and the city of Waukegan -- whose detectives were responsible for much of the police work underlying the cases -- has settled multiple claims.
Jerry Hobbs, who spent five years in jail awaiting trial for killing his 8-year-old daughter and her 9-year-old friend in 2005, reaped a settlement of nearly $8 million from various authorities. Waukegan was responsible for $4 million, with all or most of that coming from an insurer, according to city records.
In 2006, Alejandro Dominguez won a $9 million verdict from Waukegan after he spent four years in prison for a 1989 rape DNA showed he didn't commit. Insurance covered the verdict, according to court records.
Other lawsuits filed by exonerated men remain pending against Lake County authorities.
Rivera's case remains beset by puzzling questions about the methods authorities employed in the months and years that followed Holly Staker's rape and murder in August 1992. With a settlement heading off a potential trial, those mysteries may remain unsolved.
The key piece of evidence was a confession Rivera gave after an interrogation spanning four days, but that statement conflicted with an admission he'd given earlier that contained details that did not match with the killing's apparent facts.
Last year, the Tribune revealed that in 1994, police obtained a knife found steps from the crime scene, according to court records and interviews. Rivera's defense lawyers said they were never told of the knife, and there is no indication authorities ordered forensic tests before the knife was destroyed, according to court records and interviews.
More recently, the Tribune reported that a federal judge had ordered testing intended to determine whether authorities had tried to manufacture bogus evidence against Rivera.
Not long after Rivera's arrest, prosecutors had touted a pair of shoes stained with the girl's blood, suggesting he'd worn them during the crime. But authorities dropped the shoes from their case before trial with little explanation, court records show. Recently, Rivera's attorneys in the lawsuit accused police of tampering with the shoes shortly after his arrest, and they cited documents indicating the shoes weren't even available in the United States before the killing.
In addition, recent testing showed the shoes were not just stained with Holly's blood; the blood was mixed with the genetic profile of the unidentified man whose semen was found in Holly's body, according to court records.
The Tribune also reported last year that DNA from the unidentified man who sexually assaulted Holly matched genetic material found on a board that was used to beat Delwin Foxworth in North Chicago in 2000 before he was doused with gasoline and set on fire. Rivera's lawyers argue the link between the killings suggests prosecutors allowed the real culprit to walk free and kill Foxworth.
Lawyers for the man imprisoned for killing Foxworth, Marvin Williford, argue the DNA suggests their client is innocent.
Court reversals unraveled Rivera's conviction repeatedly, and prosecutors tried him for the third time in 2009, even after DNA had conclusively shown that someone else had sexually assaulted Holly. Prosecutors at the time argued that the 11-year-old was sexually active, though people who'd been close to her denied that.
Rivera walked free in 2012 after appeals judges reversed his conviction and took the rare step of barring prosecutors from trying him again.
