An appeals court has denied Barton McNeil’s request to reconsider evidence and grant him a new trial in a 1998 Bloomington murder.
McNeil was convicted of first-degree murder for the smothering death of his 3-year-old daughter, Christina. He has long maintained his innocence, claiming his ex-girlfriend Misook Nowlin to be the killer. She has denied that.
In a decision released Friday, the Fourth District Appellate Court upheld McLean County Judge William Yoder’s ruling dismissing evidence McNeil’s attorneys said could exonerate their client.
During oral arguments last month at Illinois State University, defense attorney Karl Leonard said forensic evidence implicating Nowlin was not considered during McNeil’s 1999 bench trial. Nowlin has since been convicted for the 2011 choking death of her 70-year-old mother-in-law, Lynda Tyda.
The appellate justices agreed with the trial court’s assessment, denying McNeil’s post-conviction petition for a new trial and affirming the decision to not consider DNA evidence, Nowlin’s criminal history and an expert report contradicting suspicion that Christina had been sexually assaulted. That report, they said, should have been produced during the original trial or prior appeals.
McNeil’s attorneys asserted the presence of Nowlin’s DNA in Christina’s bedding support their claim that Nowlin was in the apartment that night, saying McNeil has a receipt proving the sheets were washed. Hair, the justices said, could not conclusively be linked to Nowlin or prove McNeil's innocence.
“DNA evidence that does not match a defendant’s DNA does not automatically exonerate the defendant,” the judges wrote. “Even if we were to conclude the DNA evidence from the bed sheet and the mtDNA hair evidence were newly discovered evidence, when considered with the trial evidence, they were not of such conclusive character that they would probably change the result on retrial.”
The justices also said Lynda Tyda and Christina McNeil’s deaths were too dissimilar to introduce Nowlin’s conviction into evidence.
“Ultimately, [Nowlin] murdered Tyda in a separate offense, under factually distinct circumstances,” they wrote, “13 years after the murder of C.M. [Christina McNeil]. Therefore, this evidence is not material and does not support defendant’s claim of actual innocence.”
The appellate court further agreed with the trial court that written affidavits from relatives of Misook Nowlin claiming she admitted to killing Christina were new and material evidence, but likely inadmissible at a retrial and unlikely to reverse McNeil’s conviction.
In a statement, McNeil’s cousin, Chris Ross, chastised the court’s decision and timing.
“No surprise this ruling gets dropped late afternoon on the Friday preceding Easter weekend, the slowest news day,” Ross said.
In separate emails to the media, Ross questioned whether appellate court justices who have heard previous appeals on McNeil’s case should have recused themselves.
“This is a travesty of justice involving cronyism at its worst now on full display for everyone to see,” he said.
A statement attributed to McNeil was shared on FreeBart.org's Facebook page: "Innocence does not matter in McLean County, and if you are a child-murdering serial killer the local criminal justice system will accommodate you at the expense of the innocent," it read.
McNeil may next appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court.
