Case Explained: A 39-year saga: County to pay $1M over man’s murder conviction. ‘It makes me sick,’ DA says – Legal Perspective

Syracuse, N.Y. — The family of a former Cazenovia man is in line to get a $1 million settlement from Onondaga County, ending a decades-long legal battle over whether he was wrongfully convicted in a murder from the 1980s.

Hector Rivas had long said the former county medical examiner, Erik Mitchell, fabricated evidence that District Attorney William Fitzpatrick used in convicting him in the March 1987 murder of Rivas’ ex-girlfriend, Valerie Hill. Fitzpatrick has said there is a “mountain” of other evidence showing Rivas is guilty.

A local lawyer, Sidney Manes, agreed to help Rivas and in 2015 got a panel of federal judges to order a new trial. Rivas, who spent 24 years in prison, died in 2016 before a trial could be held. Manes died last year.

The civil rights lawsuit against Mitchell and the county was set to go to trial in late February in federal court in Syracuse, with two weeks of testimony expected. A settlement was reached after a mediation session in December that lasted nearly 12 hours, court records show.

The county Legislature is set to vote on the settlement Tuesday.

Rivas’ family was represented by a team of lawyers that included Joshua Moskovitz. He has won large civil rights lawsuits for clients such as the exonerated Central Park Five and the family of Eric Garner. He did not respond to a syracuse.com request for comment.

Fitzpatrick this week said he stands by the conviction. He sent an 11-page letter to syracuse.com | The Post-Standard defending his work and criticizing the Second Circuit’s decision to order a new trial.

“In the pantheon of cases that I’ve tried, it’s one of the strongest circumstantial cases I’ve ever had,” he said. “To give a killer’s family money that could be used for police officers or teachers, it makes me sick.”

Fitzpatrick said Friday he does not oppose the decision to settle, noting it is a civil matter out of his control. He said he is simply upset by the outcome because of his confidence in the conviction.

Mitchell, the ME, resigned in the early 1990s as he was being investigated by multiple agencies, including the DA’s office, for wrongdoing unrelated to the Rivas case. He was accused of a variety of ethical and professional issues, including removing body parts from the laboratory and boiling bones.

Mitchell kept up his work as a pathologist, performing hundreds of autopsies and testifying in criminal cases in Kansas, North Carolina, Florida and Wisconsin. He has attracted scrutiny there, too.

Mitchell could not be reached for comment.

The Rivas saga stretches from the early days of Fitzpatrick’s time as district attorney to what is now his ninth, and last, term in office. Lawyers for Fitzpatrick were defending how he obtained one of his earliest convictions after he was first sworn in as the county’s top prosecutor in 1992. The DA was ultimately dismissed as a defendant in the lawsuit.

The Hill murder case was considered cold when Fitzpatrick re-opened it after taking office.

Hill, 28, a pediatric nurse, was found dead in her apartment in Syracuse’s Eastwood neighborhood, with her bathrobe tie used to strangle her, on Monday, March 30, 1987. She also had been sexually assaulted.

One of the key issues in the case was determining when Hill died.

Lawyers for Rivas have said Mitchell had no scientific basis to conclude Hill died several days earlier, on a Friday evening. Rivas did not have an alibi for several hours that night.

Mitchell has said his estimated time of death was “probably” on the “outside edge of possibility.”

Fitzpatrick pointed to other evidence to show Rivas was guilty.

Two bottles of alcohol purchased that Friday night, and a marijuana pipe were later found at the murder scene, all with Rivas’ fingerprints on them. His cigarettes were also in an ashtray in Hill’s apartment.

One of Rivas’ friends testified that he’d heard him say a week or two after the murder, “Valerie, Valerie. I didn’t mean to do it.”

A jury convicted Rivas in 1992. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

While he was in prison, Rivas wrote to Manes to ask for help. The two men had never met.

“He immediately tweaked me,” Manes previously told syracuse.com of Rivas’ letter, “when he said, ‘Let me tell you about my problem with Erik Mitchell.’”

Manes soon started filing records requests under the state Freedom of Information Law and writing dozens of letters to obtain evidence and other documents.

Among the documents that Manes got back were at least five police reports that Rivas claimed Fitzpatrick had not turned over before trial. Two of them could have been used to argue the murder took place when Rivas had an alibi, not at the time Fitzpatrick had claimed.

Manes also discovered that slides Mitchell had apparently taken of portions of Hill’s brain to help determine the time of death did not exist. They were actually photographs.

The Second Circuit appeals court has weighed in twice in the case.

A three-judge panel ruled in 2012 that Rivas’ original trial lawyer, Richard Calle, provided ineffective assistance of counsel. He did not question the time of death put forward by prosecutors.

The appellate court further ordered a district court judge to consider whether Rivas’ conviction should be overturned.

After the judge said a new trial was not warranted, the same three-judge panel overruled him in 2015 and ordered a new trial.

Rivas did not live long enough for a jury to hear the case.

He died in July 2016 at 64 from advanced pancreatic cancer. That was about two months before the new trial was to begin.

A separate lawsuit against New York state related to Rivas’ medical care was settled in 2021 for $25,000. He was given protein shakes while losing up to 80 pounds in jail, the lawsuit said.

Manes, Rivas’ legal champion, died in January 2025 at 98. His obituary described him as a “self-proclaimed bulldog who specialized in fighting for the underdog.”

The legal battle continued until the settlement was reached last month.

Editor’s note: Syracuse.com staff writer Anne Hayes contributed to this report.