Wrongful conviction of Juan Rivera

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.

DNA testing done in 2004 on semen taken from the crime scene ruled out Rivera as the source. However, 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. Because the court ruled that there had been insufficient evidence adduced at trial to sustain a conviction, the Double Jeopardy Clause barred prosecutors from retrying Rivera. He was released from prison after serving 20 years.

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.