Jacques rivera chicago

The defense presented testimony from Chicago police officer Craig Letrich that the victim himself identified someone other than Rivera as the shooter. Letrich testified that, as a result of his interview with Valentin the day after the shooting, he showed Valentin a photo album of suspected Imperial Gangsters.

Rodriguez, however, was released without being charged. Judge Close found Rivera guilty and sentenced him to 80 years in prison. Rivera lost all of his appeals. In an interview with an investigator, the witness broke down and told of his misidentification. According to the witness, the detectives did not believe him and thought he was recanting because he was afraid of gang retaliation.

On October 4, , Cook County prosecutors announced that they did not intend to proceed to a new trial and dismissed all charges. Rivera was freed that day. That same year, Rivera filed a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing Chicago police detective Reynaldo Guevara and other officers of burying evidence and pressuring the witness to falsely identify him as the triggerman.

Rivera was the second person to be exonerated following evidence that witnesses were coerced by Guevara. On February 23, , Juan Johnson , whose year prison sentence for a murder conviction had been vacated in , was acquitted at a retrial. During the next several years after Rivera was exonerated, pressure from defense attorneys and activists alleging that Guevara was responsible for numerous false convictions was mounting.

In , the Sidley Austin report was completed. In April , two more men— Roberto Almodovar and William Negron —were exonerated after evidence showed that Guevara had improperly influenced witnesses to identify them as the shooter and driver in a drive-by shooting that killed two people and wounded a third. Almodovar and Negron were convicted in and sentenced to life in prison without parole. In November , Jose Maysonet became the seventh person to be exonerated based on misconduct by Guevara.

Maysonet, who was serving a sentence of life in prison without parole, falsely confessed after a hour interrogation punctuated by beatings and torture by Guevara. That's simply unacceptable.

The suit seeks damages for the trauma inflicted on Rivera as a result of these acts, which violated his civil rights, stole his freedom, and deprived him of more than 20 years with his wife and three children.

Press release pdf. Chicago Tribune story. Contact Us Donate. The witness described the shooter as an to year-old Hispanic male dressed in black, who fled the scene in a copper-colored car driven by another Hispanic male of the same age.

Later that evening, the witness picked out a photo of Jacques Rivera. No physical evidence connected Rivera to the crime. The witness testified that he knew Valentin, who was a friend of his older sister.

The witness said that on the day of the murder, he was crossing an alley on the way to a neighborhood video store. He testified that he saw the shooter firing his gun at Valentin as he sat waiting in his car in the alley.