Alan Beaman’s plans changed abruptly during his final year in college when he found himself in the crosshairs of a police investigation into the 1993 death of his former girlfriend.
An hour after he completed his final exam, weeks before his graduation from Illinois Wesleyan University, Normal Police arrested Beaman on murder charges related to the death of Jennifer Lockmiller. He was 21 years old.
In 1995, Beaman was convicted of murder and sentenced to 50 years. He served 13 years before the Illinois Supreme Court reversed the conviction and the state opted to drop murder charges.
Beaman’s innocence of the murder charges was later confirmed in a certificate of innocence from the state and clemency in 2015 from former Gov. Pat Quinn.
“I had never even used a cellphone before when I got out and there were like 15 different ways to dry your hands in the bathroom and how do I apply for a bank account?”Alan Beaman
On April 15, 2024, Beaman will return to the McLean County Law and Justice Center where he was convicted, this time for a civil trial against three Normal Police officers he has accused of framing him on the murder charges. The Town of Normal is also named in the lawsuit seeking unspecified damages.
Beaman is one of 3,394 people who have been exonerated in the U.S. since 1989, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, a database that records all exonerations and tracks the contributing factors that led to a wrongful conviction. The database puts the total years lost to incarceration at more than 30,250.
Starting over with nothing
Along with the loss of his freedom, Beaman was denied the chance to start a career as a lighting director in theatre productions and lay the groundwork for his financial future. As his classmates were establishing themselves professionally, Beaman was learning how to navigate the dangerous world of a maximum-security prison.
After the cell door opens, the process of rebuilding an exoneree’s life begins, first with the basics of housing, transportation and the paycheck that makes everything else possible. Absence from the job market is a hindrance, said Beaman, who was 36 when he was released.
“It’s not easy, especially when you’ve been bitten pretty hard and repeatedly, to escape bitterness and to have an attitude of faith when so much has been stacked against you,” said Beaman, now a 51-year-old father of two who lives with his family in Rockford.
Beaman had to accept that his big dream of designing lights for the likes of Metallica had passed him by.
“You’re behind the eight ball. It’s like trying to get out of college and start a new life in the middle of your midlife crisis, while you don’t have a 401K, and you have no assets and no credit,” Beaman said in a recent interview with WGLT.
A job as a design and application engineer in his hometown of Rockford provided the stability for the middle-aged exoneree, his wife Gretchen and their children.
Lost years, limited compensation
Beaman and the majority of other exonerees reside in one of the 38 states and District of Columbia that offer compensation to individuals who have been wrongfully convicted. According to Jeffrey Gutman, law professor and director of the Public Justice Advocacy Clinic at George Washington University, states began to award compensation in the 1990s as recognition that an innocent person had been convicted of a crime.
“I think that the statutes came from a place of moral conviction, the sense that in civil society one of the worst things that can happen to someone is that they are wrongfully convicted and as a result, society owes those who are in effect collateral damage from the criminal justice system,” said Gutman.
Illinois, the top producer of exonerees with 504 former defendants listed on the National Registry of Exonerations, has paid a total of $37.7 million in compensation to 345 individuals since 2008 when lawmakers agreed to make funding available. The payments average $109,000 or $15,451 for each year behind bars according to the registry.
Like many states, Illinois has a formula for determining compensation, based on the number of years in prison. Beaman received $182,000 in 2013 from the fund. To qualify for the money, exonerees must first obtain a certificate of innocence from a judge. The state often opposes the certificate.
In Beaman’s case, McLean County prosecutors dropped their opposition to the certificate after DNA test results disclosed two previously unknown male suspects and eliminated Beaman and three other men who knew the victim.
A second potential source of compensation for exonerees rests in the outcome of lawsuits they may file in federal and state courts. Data compiled by Gutman for the exoneration registry notes that most cases are filed as civil rights cases in federal court. Federal cases are sometimes resolved quickly with a settlement but the road to a trial can be long, said Gutman.
“It really depends on the government’s perception of the strength of the plaintiff’s case and an assessment as to how a jury in that jurisdiction is going to see these claims. When the government fights, and they fight hard, it takes quite a long time for the cases to be resolved.”
Beaman’s federal lawsuit against police and prosecutors was dismissed. He later filed his claims in McLean County court.
Data from Gutman’s 2019 study indicates that 808 civil cases have been filed, with exonerees who prevailed awarded more than $1.7 billion during the 30 years the registry has tracked exonerations. The average award for the 448 exonerees who succeeded in court was $3.8 million.
Geography plays a role in civil litigation, said Gutman. Illinois and New York account for about half of the money paid in settlements or verdicts favoring exonerees. Most Illinois cases are attributed to misconduct by the same Chicago police officers.
Maurice Possley, senior researcher for the registry, provides case summaries and biographies for each exoneree listed in the database that adds new entries nearly every business day. He said jury trials like the one scheduled for Beaman next year provide a window into how police and prosecutors build a criminal case.
The ability of witnesses to recall what took place 30 years ago in the murder investigation could be one factor for jurors at the trial, said Possley, along with the trial strategy of defense lawyers.
“Are the defense lawyers going to basically retry Alan and try to show that he was in fact guilty? You see that happen where their attempt to win a civil suit is to convince the jury that maybe, through some fluke, or technicality or whatever, he got out of his conviction, but he never should have. So, it can get ugly,” said Possley.
Lawyers for the three retired Normal officers and the Town of Normal have steadfastly denied allegations that police kept information from Beaman’s legal team and failed to consider or disclose information about a more viable suspect, a man who dated the victim and had a history of domestic violence and drug use.
According to Normal’s Assistant Police Chief for Operations Shane Hackman, no detective is currently assigned to the Lockmiller case, but leads related to the death of the 22-year-old victim will be investigated.
Preparing for trial
Beaman’s case has been shifted to judges in several counties in the seven years since it was filed because of judicial conflicts in the 11th Judicial Circuit where the murder took place and three former prosecutors who became judges are expected to testify at the trial. Peoria County Circuit Judge Frank Ierulli was named to the case earlier this year.
The group of McLean County residents selected as jurors for Beaman’s trial will determine if he is entitled to the significant damages his lawyers are expected to seek. Such a decision will require jurors to agree with Beaman’s position that authorities falsely accused and then worked to convict him of a murder he did not commit.
A shift in recent years in how people view police conduct may favor plaintiffs like Beaman, said Possley.
“I think we’ve seen over time an evolution of what I tend to call a heightened skepticism from regular citizens” of certain police behavior, said Possley. The expanded use of DNA testing as a tool to exonerate people as well as identify actual culprits caused people to question the fallibility of police work, he said.
“Just like there’s a heightened awareness of forensics, I think there a heightened awareness of police behavior, that police do engage in misconduct, that it is not just limited to what happens on the street, but it happens in the interrogation room, and it happens in the district attorney’s office as well,” said Possley.
Possley also cited differences in how jurors may perceive criminal and civil cases involving police. Unlike criminal trials where a conviction could negatively impact an officer’s work, a civil case is about money for the exoneree.
“I think it’s harder to convict police of a crime than it is to assess damages,” said Possley, especially when the officers are retired and the money for damages will be paid by a municipality and not from the officers’ pockets.
Beaman will be represented by a legal team that includes Jeffrey Urdangen, one of the attorneys who worked pro bono on Beaman’s post-conviction case. Urdangen and Beaman declined to speak about the specifics of the upcoming trial but in a statement to WGLT, Urdangen commented on the impact 13 years, spent mostly in a maximum-security prison, had on Beaman and his family.
“The anguish to him and his family was incalculable. Adding to this nightmare for his parents, his mother and father knew firsthand that their son was living and working in Rockford at the precise time the actual culprit was murdering the victim 130 miles away,” said Urdangen.
No primer for life after prison
Since he left prison, Beaman has stayed in contact with other exonerees. He attends events that support innocence projects and court hearings for those who are still working to prove their innocence. Barton McNeil, a defendant in another McLean County murder case involving the same prosecutors who worked on Beaman’s case, is one of the people Beaman has supported.
Exonerees share a common bond, said Beaman.
“There’s no primer for this,” Beaman said of the challenges people face after they leave prison.
Beaman said lawyers and other supporters are helpful but the realities of entering a world that changed during the years he was incarcerated can be difficult.
“I had never even used a cellphone before when I got out and there were like 15 different ways to dry your hands in the bathroom and how do I apply for a bank account?”
The camaraderie between exonerees helps with that transition, said Beaman, and eases the recurring regrets and anguish over what has been lost.
“We need each other for help and there’s a lot of interaction towards encouraging each other to keep that faith that good things have happened to us for a reason and in spite of the bad things that happened before that, there’s a purpose to our lives and that we can be there for each other and help the next guy or the next gal that’s going through that situation,” said Beaman.
Beaman has also worked with law enforcement on training programs that teach recruits how to avoid wrongful convictions.
“I want to see continued improvement in our legal system, that makes a tangible difference for the next person that is suspected of something who turns out not to be the one who did it … and actually achieving the mission of bringing justice for the victim and bringing justice for the perpetrators,” said Beaman.
Beaman case timeline
August 28, 1993: The body of Jennifer Lockmiller, 22, is found in the bedroom of her apartment in Normal.
May 17, 1994: After a 9-month investigation, murder charges are filed against Alan Beaman.
April 1, 1995: A McLean County jury finds Beaman guilty of murder and he is sentenced to 50 years in prison.
April 1997: Beaman files a post-conviction petition based on his innocence of the murder charges.
May 22, 2008: The Illinois Supreme Court reverses the murder conviction based on “tenuous” evidence used against him and the state’s failure to disclose critical evidence to the defense.
June 26, 2008: Beaman is released from prison.
January 29, 2009: The state dismisses murder charges.
January 2010: Beaman files a federal lawsuit against three Normal detectives, two prosecutors and other detectives alleging civil rights violations. The lawsuit was later dismissed based in part on qualified immunity for the defendants.
June 2012: Results of DNA tests exclude Beaman and three other men as contributors; two previously unidentified male suspects are revealed.
April 2013: The state issues a certificate of innocence to Beaman.
April 2014: Beaman files a lawsuit in McLean County court against former officers Tim Freesmeyer, Frank Zayas and Dave Warner and the Town of Normal.
January 9, 2015: Gov. Pat Quinn pardons Beaman “based upon innocence as if no conviction.”
June 2016: The lawsuit is dismissed by a McLean County judge. The 4th District Appellate Court affirmed the dismissal.
February 2019: The Illinois Supreme Court reversed dismissal of the lawsuit and sent it back for further proceedings. The 4th District Court in December 2019 reinstates the dismissal.
July 29, 2021: After another reversal of the 4th District’s dismissal, the Illinois Supreme Court sends the civil case back to McLean County for trial.
April 15, 2024: A decade after it was filed and 16 years after Beaman was released, the case is set for trial.
