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Public Affairs coverage from our award-winning staff |
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Juan Rivera's Attorneys Pushing for Acquittal or Fourth Trial
Produced by Rob Wildeboer on Friday, June 26, 2009
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A Lake County, Illinois, Judge says he doesn't think Juan Rivera can be trusted to live outside of prison. Judge Christopher Starck said yesterday that's why he sentenced Rivera to life in prison without parole for the 1992 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl. It's the third time he's handed down that sentence to Rivera.
Rivera and his attorneys did little to try and soften up the judge and get a lighter sentence yesterday. Rivera stood up and with the victim's family in the courtroom he once again declared his innocence and defiantly said he'll seek the truth for himself and justice for the family of the murdered girl.
Defense attorneys, who tried to stay in the judge's good graces during the trial let loose saying the trial had the trappings and semblance of a trial, but not the reality of one. And they accused the judge of being biased and of making so many rulings against them that he cut off their defense at the knees. Jeff Urdangen was one of the lawyers on Rivera's defense team who earlier had asked the judge to step down.
URDANGEN: We felt as that we needed a fair judge. A judge that hadn't prejudged the case.
Starck oversaw Rivera's first two trials, and he twice sentenced Rivera to life in prison.
URDANGEN: I did not expect him to deviate from what he's done in the past.
In court, Starck said he believed he'd been fair throughout the trial and pointed out that he was the one who ordered the third trial based on new DNA evidence. Defense lawyer and former U.S. attorney Tom Sullivan said prosecutors went overboard in advocating their case. In their appeal, defense attorneys say that may have been politically motivated. They say Lake County State's Attorney Michael Waller announced charges against Rivera in 1992 only four days before an election, an announcement they say Waller needed to make to put the high profile case to rest and retain public office.
WALLER: The defense has made allegations after allegations...
That's Waller. He says he's confident the conviction will stand, though he says he thought that with the first conviction too and it was overturned. He says Rivera has gotten three fair trials and had good representation every time.
WALLER: the most recent trial he had all the assets of Northwestern University and the support and all the assets of one of the largest law firms in Chicago, Jenner and Block.
The strangest part of the case is that the DNA evidence from the vaginal swab didn't match Rivera yet the jury still found him guilty of the rape and murder. Prosecutors argued that the DNA could have been contaminated somewhere along the line or it could have been deposited when the 11-year-old had a sexual encounter shortly before Rivera raped and murdered her. Waller says he's convinced of Rivera's guilt because Rivera signed two confessions.
WALLER: The only thing that matters is the evidence that was presented in the three different trials and the verdicts that have been returned by three separate juries.
MARSHALL: It is easy to say, well three juries have convicted, what else do you need to know? The question is has any one of the juries ever been given all of the information that is critical to making a reasoned decision on whether he's guilty. The answer to that from everything I have seen is an emphatic no.
Larry Marshall recently signed up to represent Rivera in his appeal. He teaches a Stanford Law School but he was one of the co-founders of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University.
MARSHALL: If I didn't understand a lot about confessions, I would have thought, you have a confession, that's it. Everything else is nonsense.
Marshall says jurors need to understand that people will sometimes confess to things they didn't do. That's something defense attorneys say they didn't get to show because the judge wouldn't let expert witnesses testify on the subject. They'll likely appeal that as well as the fact that they weren't allowed to introduce certain newspaper articles into evidence. See, the prosecutors told jurors that Rivera's confession contained facts that would be known only to the killer but Marshall says...
MARSHALL: The jury was not allowed to understand that the things that he supposedly knew were things that were in newspapers already.
LEON: His statement was awesome.
SANDERS-RIVERA: Now you people know why I contacted him first.
After the sentencing, Rivera's family went to a McDonald's nearby, inspired by the new lawyer on the case. They did a post-game analysis of the sentence and the talked about an appeals court finding Rivera not-guilty, or at least ordering a fourth trial.
SANDERS-RIVERA: We've been through this how many years so we know, we'll go for another trial. Absolutely the next step is ask for change of venue change of judge...
But while Rivera's family hopes for a new trial and freedom, the family of the murdered 11-year-old is seeking just the opposite. They asked the judge to sentence Rivera to life so that they can move on and never have to go through one of these trials again. So far, Rivera has spent 17 years in prison. The appeals process will take at least a couple years.
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