Hector Rivas

Hector Rivas as he looked before being sent to state prison in 1993.

(Submitted photo)

Syracuse, NY -- A federal appeals court threw out Hector Rivas's murder conviction in his ex-girlfriend's strangulation 29 years ago and ordered a new trial.

But Rivas, 64, formerly of Cazenovia, died this weekend at Upstate University Hospital while awaiting his new trial. He could not make $200,000 bail after being released from prison, so he had been sitting in the Syracuse jail until his hospitalization.

Rivas's health had rapidly deteriorated this year. He needed a wheelchair for his last few court appearances and looked increasingly thin and pale.

Rivas spent two decades in prison fighting his 1993 conviction. Rivas was found guilty in the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Valerie Hill, of Syracuse, inside her Eastwood apartment. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Hill, a pediatric nurse, was found dead by her father, Randall Hill, on March 28, 1987. Her bathrobe tie had been used to strangle her and she had been sexually assaulted.

The case sat cold for five years and two district attorneys, until then first-term District Attorney William Fitzpatrick won a conviction in a 1993 jury trial.

Fitzpatrick confirmed Rivas's death this afternoon. Two of Rivas's lawyers, Ed Klein and Sidney Manes, declined comment.

Valerie Hill

Rivas's death came about two months before his retrial date of Sept. 19. Despite pressure from the federal court to speed up the process, County Court Judge Thomas J. Miller delayed the new trial several times after hearing from Rivas's own attorneys and, eventually, Rivas himself.

His trial attorneys, Klein and Kim Zimmer, said that preparations for his first trial had been rushed and vowed to do a thorough job this time. Rivas said he had no choice but to wait if his lawyers needed more time.

Rivas was originally granted a new trial in March 2015. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that Rivas's attorney, Richard Calle, did such a bad job that the jury might have acquitted him had the case been handled properly.

"In effect, Calle's alibi defense amounted to no defense at all," wrote 2nd Circuit Judge Jose Cabranes in 2015.

There were two major problems with Calle's defense, according to Rivas's lawyers:

• Calle did not grill then-medical examiner Erik Mitchell about an ongoing investigation into his own conduct. Mitchell was forced to resign eight months after Rivas's trial over allegations unrelated to Rivas's case.

• Calle did not question the time of death asserted by authorities. There was some contention that Hill was killed during a time in which Rivas had an alibi. But prosecutors have always maintained that the murder could have happened during a period in which Rivas could not show his whereabouts.

The court had previously found that jurors likely would have acquitted Rivas if they'd heard medical testimony from a forensic pathologist who testified in recent years that it was highly unlikely Hill could've died more than 48 hours before her body was found.

The time of death, which Calle had not found to be an issue, was likely to play a big role at Rivas's retrial. In fact, defense lawyers had been trying to convince the judge to order Mitchell back to court from the Midwest to explain his investigation.

There was also an anonymous 911 call pointing to a different murderer that defense lawyers felt should have been vetted. (Prosecutor Robert Moran suggested it was Rivas on the call trying to cover his tracks.)

Miller, the judge, had hoped to try this case in December 2015. But due to delays in gathering and re-examining evidence, the case kept getting adjourned.

The three-judge federal court was considering springing Rivas from jail while the process dragged on. But that was never decided before his death.

Their decision overturned two decades of decisions by state judges to uphold Rivas's conviction in Hill's death.