The Illinois Supreme Court has denied requests to hear a pair of high-profile McLean County murder cases.
Jamie Snow and Barton McNeil have both had their appeals to the state's highest court turned down. Both men were convicted of murder in the 1990s and have maintained their innocence. They each have representation from the University of Chicago Law School’s Exoneration Project. McNeil also has support from the Illinois Innocence Project.
McNeil was convicted of suffocating his 3-year-old daughter Christina in 1998. He believes his ex-girlfriend, Misook Nowlin, committed the crime. Nowlin is serving time in prison for an unrelated murder.
An appeals court previously denied McNeil’s request to hear evidence related to the defense's theory of the case. A denial from the state Supreme Court leaves few remaining options to have his conviction overturned.
Speaking to WGLT from Graham Correctional Center, McNeil said he is disappointed, but not surprised.
“My wrongful conviction seems to be rubber stamped at every stage of the appeals process,” he said.
Family and supporters of Jamie Snow gathered Thursday for an International Wrongful Convictions Day event at Heartland Community College, organized by criminal justice students at the college. Snow was convicted in 2001 of the 1991 shooting death of William Little during a gas station robbery in Bloomington. The circumstantial case included shaky eyewitness testimony and jailhouse informants, several of whom have since recanted.
Snow’s daughter, Nicole Snow, said her father is upset by the news that the Illinois Supreme Court will not hear his case, which centers on crime scene evidence that was never tested.
“It’s a constant fight, so it’s not something we’re not familiar with,” Nicole Snow said. “But it does dampen our hope, and we have to fight to overcome that.”
A man exonerated for a murder in McLean County said the appeals process counts on stalling and wearing down defendants and families. Alan Beaman was convicted of the 1993 murder of his former girlfriend Jennifer Lockmiller in Normal. The Illinois Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 2008.
He was a panelist at Thursday’s event at HCC, a focus of which was the impact of wrongful convictions on family members.
“That family support is critical,” he said. “You have to have people in your corner that can lose and get up and fight again, and lose and get up and fight again, and lose and get up and fight again. It takes a tremendous amount of patience and fortitude to get through these processes.”
Beaman said McLean County incentivizes hasty convictions, while the appeals process drags on. In several instances, enough time has passed that the judge hearing an appeal was once a prosecutor in the office that convicted the defendant.
“McLean County drags everything out,” he said. “It’s a pattern of practice here to delay, delay, delay, to kick the can down the road as much as possible. They’re counting on you giving up. They’re counting on you getting tired.”
Now approaching his 10,000th day in prison, McNeil said his daughter motivates him to keep going.
“I think it’s the duty of the father of any murdered child to seek justice on her behalf and pursue her transparently obvious killer,” he said. “This has been my primary goal all these years.”
Both legal teams could petition the federal courts to take up their appeals. Another option is clemency.
“It is approaching the end of the road, and the few remaining options do not have a high likelihood of success,” McNeil said. “Chances are, I’m going to leave prison in a pine box."
'We're definitely not giving up'
Attorney and author John Grisham recently published an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune urging Gov. JB Pritzker to grant clemency to Jamie Snow.
“We’re definitely advocating for clemency,” said Nicole Snow, who was 6 years old when her father was arrested. “John Grisham’s article talked about that in a way that’s really approachable for us. My dad’s lawyers are also working on things. We’re just doing whatever we can.”
“We’re definitely not giving up,” said Jessica Snow, the second oldest of Snow's six children. “Some days are harder than others, but we’re really close to our dad. We can’t give up hope. We’re not going to just accept this is going to be the outcome for his life.”
Retired journalist Edith Brady-Lunny moderated two discussions centered around Snow's case, with Beaman and Nicole and Jessica Snow joined by Exoneration Project attorney Lauren Myerscough-Mueller; retired Holmdel, New Jersey, police chief Ray Wilson; and Andy Schiltz, a juror at the trial of Snow’s alleged accomplice, Susan Powell-Claycomb, who was acquitted.
“I’ve gone through the case and the documents,” Schiltz said, “and I am convinced that [Snow] was wrongfully convicted,” adding he feels a responsibility to advocate for Snow.
“The discovery was the same in both trials,” he said. “They withheld the same 7,000+ documents in both trials. The case was overwhelmingly about Jamie, because they had to convince us that he was guilty in order for Susan to be guilty.”
Schiltz said Powell-Claycomb had “the benefit of a great lawyer,” defense attorney Steve Skelton. And the order of the two trials may have mattered. Schiltz said prosecutors invited the Powell-Claycomb jury to discuss their case after-the-fact.
“They had donuts and coffee for us,” he said. “We told them — and this is part of why I feel some portion of guilt — we told them that Danny Martinez saying that he was only 85% sure [was relevant]. This is our main eyewitness. He said he was 85% sure at our trial. Well, come to Jamie’s trial, he became 100% sure.”
In recorded remarks sent from Illinois River Correctional Center, Snow said he’d “give just about anything to be there” for the day’s events.
“I hope and pray two things come from this event,” he said. “I hope we reach the one person who can change this case and turn it on its head. That could be someone who knows the truth in the case. It could be someone from the state’s attorney’s office. It could be the governor. And I hope all you students, when the chance comes your way to be a juror — and it will come your way — hold the prosecutors to a standard you would hope someone else would if it was someone you loved in that courtroom.”
