Among the 8,000 pages of previously undisclosed police records reviewed by lawyers for Jamie Snow are confessions by others to the murder that sent Snow to prison for life, according to a new court filing in Snow’s challenge to his conviction.
Snow, now 55, is seeking a new trial on charges that he killed Bill Little, a gas station attendant shot during a 1991 robbery.
Earlier this year,a judge gave Snow’s legal team with the Exoneration Project permission to review to about 8,000 pages of police reports related to Snow’s case.
Eighteen documents and recordings seen by defense counsel for the first time include information on alternate suspects, confessions by others to the crime, and documents that contradicted or impeached witnesses who testified at Snow’s trial, according to last week's filing by lawyer Lauren Myerscough-Mueller.
Snow has sought forensic testing on several pieces of evidence and fingerprints, a request the state has challenged. The “significant information” in documents in Bloomington Police Department files could have an impact on the pending motion for testing, according to Myerscough-Mueller.
“The State’s briefing in opposition to the testing has focused in part on the purported strength of the State’s evidence against Mr. Snow. The materials discovered in BPD’s disclosure contain significant information that calls the strength of the evidence — and the conviction itself — into question,” said the defense motion.
Snow’s battle to obtain his records spans more than 15 years.
Snow’s trial lawyers — the usual source of discovery documents — were not helpful. Attorney Frank Picl was sent to prison for bilking an elderly client out of more than $278,000, and co-counsel G. Patrick Riley is deceased. Snow was told the materials in the possession of his lawyers had been destroyed, leaving the state as the only source of the information, according to the new defense motion.
When the Exoneration Project took on Snow’s case in 2008, long pauses in court proceedings occurred as the case was moved to Schuyler County because of judicial conflicts in McLean County. In March, Judge Ramon Escapa ordered the state to turn over the 8,000 pages of records to the defense for review.
The state will file its response to the defense motion later this month. A Sept. 8 hearing is set in McLean County to review the status of the case.
