An appellate court has denied Jamie Snow's request for more evidence testing that he thinks will exonerate him in a 1991 Bloomington murder.
Snow was convicted of fatally shooting gas station employee Billy Little and is serving life in prison. He’s been fighting that conviction for over 20 years.
Snow took his case to the Fourth District Appellate Court for oral arguments last month in Normal, after a trial court denied his request for testing on blood and fingerprints found at the scene, plus bullets and clothing recovered from Little’s body.
In a decision released Tuesday, the appellate justices upheld that decision.
“As the trial court indicated, any identification from DNA or fingerprint testing would simply show a person at some point visited the gas station,” they wrote. “Given the evidence presented against defendant and the evidence defendant seeks to acquire through testing, we agree with the trial court’s assessment that defendant has not shown a favorable result of the testing would significantly advance his claim of actual innocence.”
Snow was arrested eight years after the crime took place, with a case primarily built on eyewitness testimony and jailhouse informants claiming Snow admitted to killing Little. Many who identified Snow as the suspect in the 1991 robbery have since recanted their testimony or been deemed unreliable by the defense.
Snow has argued there’s no forensic evidence connecting him to Little’s murder and that more testing could point to the real killer. In an earlier round of testing, in 2009, results showed a human DNA profile in the blood matched Little and excluded Snow.
Snow and his lawyers have argued there was a struggle between Little and his killer, and that another human DNA profile could be found in the blood with more testing.
But the appellate justices say “the evidence does not support (Snow’s) theory.”
“The evidence simply does not support (Snow’s) theory that there was a struggle between Little and the alleged perpetrator,” they wrote. “Because defendant has not shown additional DNA testing on the blood has the potential to produce more probative results than the previous testing to which it was subjected, we find the court did not err in denying his motion to the extent it requested said testing.”
Snow is trying to use a state law that allows for postconviction forensic testing under certain conditions.
“There is no constitutional right to postconviction forensic testing; rather, access to it is a matter of legislative grace,” the appellate justices wrote.
Snow may try to appeal next to the Illinois Supreme Court.
