Juan Rivera was back in Lake County Wednesday night, as he appeared at the first public showing of a documentary about his two-decade legal odyssey related to his wrongful convictions in the rape and murder of a Waukegan girl.
A crowd of about 200 people watched “Your Name is Juan Rivera” at the Gorton Center in Lake Forest, and then listened to Rivera as he participated in a panel discussion.
Rivera was convicted in three separate trials for the 1992 rape and murder of 11-year-old Holly Staker, despite evidence that continually unraveled over the years, including a false confession extracted from a then 19-year-old Rivera that came at the end of a grueling three-day police interrogation.
No physical evidence linked Rivera to the crime, and DNA evidence later excluded Rivera as Staker’s killer. An appeals court vacated his conviction in 2012, and Lake County later paid Rivera a $20 million lawsuit settlement.
Despite his wrongful imprisonment, Rivera says in the film, and told the audience afterward, that he is not bitter, and is looking to move forward.
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Rivera, who resides in Chicago, created Legacy Barber College in Chicago to teach hair styling skills. He said he hit on the idea as a profession that requires technical and people skills, but not an intimidating amount of formal education. It is also a job where customers don’t care about your background, or past legal troubles, Rivera said.
“All they care about is a good haircut and beautiful eyebrows,” he joked.
He said mentoring is important for people like he was as a young man. He had minor scrapes with the law, and said lacked direction and did not value education.
“Now I think differently and I know education is very important, not only for your career but so your kids can see that you’re trying to better yourself,'” he said.
The documentary is a case study of how grueling interrogation techniques can result in false confessions, and how tunnel vision can lead to wrongful convictions.
The filmmaker, Dan Asma, is the brother of Dave Asma, a Lake County investigator in the public defender’s office who was involved in the Rivera case. Both participated in the panel discussion. Dave Asma said many false confessions result from police officers who think they have an innate sense of when a suspect is being truthful.
“A lot of it is about police training, where they believe they are good lie-detectors,” Asma said. “People suck at recognizing guilt, even well-trained officers.”
The film shows video taken in 2014 depositions for Rivera’s lawsuit that was eventually settled. One of the investigators is asked if he still believes Rivera, who had by then been freed, is guilty of the girl’s murder. “Absolutely,” the investigator says.
Rivera said it would mean a lot for authorities to finally find the person who actually killed Staker, and who may also have killed a North Chicago man in 2000.
“Holly Staker’s family still has a void. They believed that I was guilty based on the information they were given,” he said. “To me, it would be important that the family has closure.”
Dan Asma said the filmmakers hope to finalize the documentary in the coming months, and they hope to sell it to a streaming service like Netflix.
The presentation at the Gorton Center was sponsored by Lake Forest College.