Juan Rivera

In 2015, a federal judge ordered DNA testing to investigate the allegations of evidence tampering. The results showed that the blood on the shoes belonged to Staker, and that it contained a second genetic profile – one that matched the semen sample taken from the crime scene. "The only realistic inference from the foregoing evidence is that someone endeavored to plant Holly Staker's blood on Mr. Rivera's Voit shoes and in doing so inadvertently planted both her blood there and the blood of the as-yet unidentified killer", said Rivera's attorney.

DNA testing conducted on the shoes in 2014 indicated that the blood belonged to Staker, but it also contained another genetic sample. The DNA in this matched the semen sample from Staker. Rivera's defense team insists that this is proof not only that the blood was planted, but that the real killer's DNA was inadvertently planted as well. The DNA has yet to be matched to an individual, but it has been linked to DNA from the scene of a home invasion and murder in 2000 in Chicago by three men. Only one man of the three has been identified; he was convicted of that crime and is in prison. He claims to have been wrongfully convicted.

In 2014, former Waukegan police chief Dan Greathouse, who is handling the re-investigation of the Staker case, told Rivera's attorneys that a knife was found a decade before near the crime scene. In 1994, a neighbor uprooted a bush between his house and the murder scene and found a serrated knife. Rivera's attorneys were not notified about the existence of the weapon, and the police destroyed it without any testing. In the original investigation, police found a broken, straight-edged knife in a nearby yard. No physical evidence connected the weapon to the crime, but prosecutors argued that it was the murder weapon. Rivera confessed that he had broken the knife during the crime and then discarded it.

In 2014 when DNA testing was conducted on evidence from the Staker crime scene, a match was found with DNA taken from evidence in the murder in 2000 of a Chicago man. Thirty-nine-year-old Delwin Foxworth was reportedly attacked by three burglars in his Chicago home in January 2000. He was held at gunpoint and tied up before being beaten with a board, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. He was able to extinguish the flames and seek help, but he later died in August 2002 as a result of his injuries.

In December 2011, Rivera's conviction was overturned a third and final time. The appellate court criticized the confession, noting the complete absence of any information that was not previously known to members of the investigation team. Each time Rivera gave information that was not already known, the information proved to be false. For example, Rivera claimed to have burned his clothing in a specific dumpster; there was no evidence of a previous fire in that dumpster. He also told investigators that there was another child at the scene – a boy – when there was only a 2-year-old girl. The only details Rivera was able to give investigators that could be corroborated were details that were already known to them.

On April 13, 2009, Rivera's third jury trial began. On May 8, the jury found Rivera guilty and he was sentenced to life in prison for the third time.

DNA testing done in 2004 on semen taken from the crime scene ruled out Rivera as the source. But, the prosecution argued that Staker had been sexually active and the semen sample came from her previous consensual sex with another man. Rivera was convicted a third time. His conviction was overturned by the appellate court, which took the unusual step of barring prosecutors from retrying Rivera. He was released from prison after serving 20 years.

In 2004, Rivera filed a motion to test the DNA from the vaginal swabs taken from the crime scene. The motion was granted and DNA testing excluded Rivera as the source of the semen sample. Rivera's conviction was vacated a second time.

Rivera's first conviction was overturned and he was retried in 1998. Taylor Arena, the child whom Staker had been babysitting, testified at this trial. Arena, who was 2 years old at the time of Staker's murder and 8 at the time of the retrial, testified that she remembered the events of the evening and identified Rivera as the man who had attacked Staker. After four days of deliberation, the jury acquitted him of the first-degree murder charge, but convicted him on three other murder counts. He was sentenced to life without parole.

After his release, Rivera's attorneys asked the courts to order genetic testing on Rivera's shoes. The prosecution had tried to enter these into evidence in 1993. The shoes had Staker's blood on them, but the prosecution withdrew the evidence prior to Rivera's first trial when they learned that the shoes had not been available for sale anywhere in the United States until after the murder.

Rivera was charged with first-degree murder on the basis of his confession. He was convicted in November 1993.

After Rivera's conviction was overturned, his attorney sought to conduct further genetic testing on a piece of evidence that prosecutors attempted to introduce at his trial in 1993: a pair of shoes owned by Rivera that were found to have Staker's blood on them. The police collected the shoes a few weeks after Rivera's arrest from a fellow inmate; Rivera had traded his shoes to the man in exchange for a television set.

On August 17, 1992, police received a call from a woman in Waukegan, Illinois, who reported that the babysitter for her two children, 11-year-old Holly Staker, was missing and the back door to the apartment had been kicked in. Staker's partially clothed body was found on the floor of the children's bedroom. She had been raped, stabbed 27 times, and strangled. Vaginal and anal swabs tested positive for semen.

On September 29, 1992, police received a tip from a prison inmate that another inmate, Puerto Rican-born Juan Rivera, believed he knew who killed Staker. According to the informant, Rivera told him he was at a party that night near the crime scene and saw a man acting suspiciously.

No physical evidence was found linking him to the crime, and the fingerprints taken from the crime scene did not match Rivera. At the time of the crime, Rivera was wearing an electronic monitor from a previous conviction. Electronic monitoring system records showed that Rivera did not leave his home on August 17, 1992. Phone records also showed a call from Rivera's home to a relative in Puerto Rico that evening.

Juan A. Rivera Jr. (born October 31, 1972) is an American man who was wrongfully convicted three times for the 1992 rape and murder of 11-year-old Holly Staker in Waukegan, Illinois. He was convicted twice on the basis of a confession that he said was coerced. No physical evidence linked him to the crime scene. In 2015 he received a $20 million settlement from Lake County, Illinois for wrongful conviction, formerly the largest settlement of its kind in United States history.