Man sues the City of Chicago for wrongful imprisionment

A man sent to prison for murder 21 years ago, then released last fall after a key witness recanted, accuses Chicago police in a lawsuit of manipulating the witness and falsifying evidence.

“Jacques Rivera has suffered a grave injustice at the hands of Chicago police," attorney Locke Bowman said today in announcing the lawsuit. “This is a pattern within the Chicago Police Department."

Rivera, a former Latin King, was convicted of killing 16-year-old Felix Valentin during a summer of rising violence among warring street gangs in Chicago's West Humboldt Park neighborhood in 1988.

The state's only witness was 12 at the time of the murder. Orlando Lopez testified he was hiding in an alcove about 25 feet away when he saw Rivera fire shots into Valentin's parked car, then turn toward him and look in his direction.

Judge Michael Close convicted Rivera of the murder and sentenced him to 80 years in prison.

Rivera's lawyers with Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions tracked down Lopez in 2010. He recanted his testimony, swearing in an affidavit that he tried to notify police and prosecutors before Rivera's trial that he had identified the wrong individual but that they wouldn't listen.

Last month, Judge Neera Walsh ruled that Lopez's recantation was credible and ordered a new trial for Rivera. Cook County prosecutors then decided not to retry Rivera and he was released from jail last October.

According to the suit, Lopez was unable to identify anyone as Valentin’s assailant during the first line-up that included Rivera. The suit claims that no police record was made of this line-up and, instead, "detectives falsified records to show that Lopez had not viewed the line-up."

Lopez later encountered the "actual shooter in his neighborhood," according to the suit. Lopez told police but they "proceeded to pressure and manipulate the 12-year-old boy into falsely identifying Rivera," the suit contends.

"Simply releasing Mr. Rivera from prison has not made him whole for all that he has suffered,” said Jon Loevy, another attorney for Rivera. “He deserves compensation for the injustice that cost him so much of his life.”