Just Hearing This Now?

Ridiculous:

• 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.

"former" as in his dues lapsed for the past 21 years.

• 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."

So for 21 years, this witness didn't tell anyone that he didn't identify the shooter and had actually picked out the wrong person in the line up? How believable is that crap? He couldn't find a lawyer or media-type to counter this supposed injustice inflicted upon the plaintiff 20 years ago?

Or how about he got the right guy the first time, was shocked to find out how easily people could find him years later, then justifies his "recanting" by thinking 20 years is long enough for a murder.

We like that explanation better.