2001 Barton McNeil Direct Appeal before the 4th District Appellate Court of Springfield, IL

Below are various documents relating to Barton’s 2001 direct appeal.

This appeal is granted everyone who is convicted of a crime where various court issues relating to rules or evidence or the reasons a convicted person did not receive a fair trial can be raised.

Virtually every case where there is a conviction is automatically appealed by the attorney who handled the case to one of Illinois five appellate court jurisdictions. This is known as a “Direct Appeal”.

The 4th District Appellate Court located in Springfield, Illinois, having comprised of ten justices, handle about 1,000 cases or more each year as relating to 41 counties located in central and western Illinois that is a very wide swath of land considering there are just 102 counties in the entire State. Cases coming out of McLean County and their 11th Circuit Court is one of their jurisdictions.

Due to the number of appeals made each year, the appeals process in order to be efficient is very streamlined as compared to how cases are handled in the Circuit Court that span many hearings and trials that can last days if not weeks. In the much more expedient and efficient appeals process, there are written pleadings by both sides, however they cannot exceed 50-pages. That include defendent’s final maximum 20-page rebuttal to the State’s 50-page counter argument. If oral arguments are requested that happen in about 25% of all cases, these arguments before the three court justices last no longer than 20-minutes by each side. Following oral arguments the three judges assigned the case then make their ruling in what typically happens within a couple of months of the oral arguments date.

Barton’s attorney appealed the bench trial decision that had been rendered against him in July of 1998 that sentenced him to lifetime imprisonment. At the time of this appeal Barton had been in a Maximum Security Prison in Pontiac, Illinois. It took a little more than 3-years from the time of his wrongful conviction to make its way to the three justices assigned to the 4th hearing it. There were two issues central to the appeal (1) Barton did not receive a fair trial and (2) a new sentencing statute requiring all persons sentenced to lifetime imprisonment be re-sentenced by the judge who first sentenced him to something less than “life” as this is too severe a word and sentence it was decided.

So once can see in the attached that half of his appeal was essentially on autopilot as his re-sentencing was going to happen no matter what so the judges were compelled to allow that. In reading the attached it would almost seem they were doing Barton a favor in allowing him to be re-sentenced but they were just following orders as coming from the Illinois Supreme Court.

As a side note Bart then could have faced anywhere from 20-100 years and the original judge continued to throw the book at Bart, sentencing him to the maximum 100-years that Barton’s is imprisoned by to this very day. Eligible for parole only after serving 50 years of the sentence (Barton has now served just 26 yeras). Barton fired his attorney Tracy Smith leading up to his 2002 re-sentencing and railed against the system that had wrongfully convicted him. Stating the following during the course of his appeal. This statement was made about a year after his direct appeal effort failed but worthy to include what he wrote:

In Barton’s direct appeal, he claims as he had all along since Day One, that Misook killed his daughter and that he was therefore prevented a fair trial since he had been gagged from uttering her name due to the motion in limine put in place by the State. The justices of the 4th Appellate Court district disagreed. Their 3-0 opinion was to affirm the lower trial court’s ruling of Barton being guilty of murdering his daughter.

It must now be asked, in the face of all of the new evidence, how would these justices had ruled if this appeal was being heard today?

Fortunately Barton has an appeals hearing scheduled before this same court due to the hard and unwavering efforts of the Illinois Innocence Project and the Exoneration Project.

They will soon be presenting arguments as relating to all of the evidence they had amassed that likely would have swayed a single jurist to render a not guilty opinion in the Barton McNeil case. Evidence that the appeal states had been prematurely dismissed by Judge William Yoder during what is known as the 2nd Stage Evidentiary Hearing that was held in May of 2022. The Judge later ruling most all if as not being relevant or cumulative or would not have swayed a single jurist in his ruling of October 2022. He then allowed two items of evidence to advance to the 3rd Stage Evidentiary Hearing which was the twin confession evidence relating to Misook in a prior fit of anger having confessed to her husband Don Wang (whose mother she later went onto kill). At that hearing Misook please her right to invoke the Fifth Amendment. This too is part of the appeal. That her pleading the Fifth should also have been considered by Judge Yoder but he did not.

So part of the current appeal before the 4th is to tell the appeals court that the lower 11th Circuit Court judge erred in dismissing the evidence at the 2nd Stage in his October 2022 ruling when it should have gone on to be more fully vetted at the 3rd Stage.

The legal team is now requesting the 4th Appellate District Court justices that were assigned to review the case to either rule Barton deserves a new trial, or in the alternative, to re-send the matter back to Judge William Yoder. In the latter, it is hoped the court would require Judge Yoder hold a 3rd stage evidentiary hearing so that the underlying evidence be better understood by everyone as to the significance of the evidence and it that same evidence if admitted in a trial, would have had the potential to sway a jurist to consider making a difference decision? The bar is not that the jurist would vote Barton innocent, but that the evidence would at least cause this jurist further pause to at least “consider it” if Barton were ordered a new trial.

Below is the ruling from 2001, twenty-four years ago!

Then, following the Appellate court’s ruling that upheld the lower court’s opinion, Barton makes one final attempt by drafting, finalizing and filing by himself (he no longer has the aid of the Court appointed Appellate Public Defender’s office) what is known as a Petition for a Rehearing. This is a legal document that requests the appeal court reconsider its decision.

In reading this Petition, one can see that Barton discovers that the cases used against him (known as Case Law precedents or “Controlling case law”), had only a distant and remote connection to the victim when analyzed closely.

Meanwhile with the Barton McNeil case we all know by now that it was all about their tempestuous relationship and Misook’s anger management issues.

Misook had even been convicted of unlawfully restraining Bart the previous year for which she was about to get sentenced for and Barton had just argued with her the night before letting her know he no longer planned to testify on her behalf. The judges even cite their being aware Misook had been involved in a grotesque and violent act of smothering perpetrated by Misook against her very own daughter Michelle Nowlin just months after Barton was prematurely arrested.

Below is Barton’s Petition for a Rehearing:

The court then denied this Petition for a Rehearing that Bart had filed in 2002. The decision not to take up this Petition came with no write up or response that Barton can recall.

Barton then makes this same appeal (Petition for a Rehearing) to the Illinois Supreme Court who also elected not to accept the Petition.

The Petition for a Rehearing is interesting as they can now be seen as words authored by an innocent man fighting to reverse his injustice.

While the court upheld Barton’s wrongful conviction in 2001, how would they rule today now with the benefit of all of the newly acquired evidence. In the ruling they even discuss how smudges were found in the bedroom window sill but that no fingerprints could be lifted or matched to Misook. The fingerprints could have been left at anytime by Misook but this would still have been of interest to the presiding justices since they reference it when rendering their ruling. How would they then rule if they knew that Misook’s biological DNA was located on top of six out of eight quadrants of Christina McNeil’s own bedding! With a hair of Misook’s found on the bedding to boot!

For all those wishing to a do a much more thorough dive on Barton’s 2001 Direct Appeal, below is a document that includes the appeal itself that Barton was barely consulted on for which he hated and knew it was destined to fail, as well as McLean County State’s Attorney Charles Reynard’s counter argument to the appeal, which led to the 4th District Appellate Court’s decision.

At this time Barton McNeil’s current appeal will be orally argued in front of three justices of the 4th District Appellate Court on Tuesday, March 25th, at 10:00 a.m. at the Prairie Room located at the Illinois Bone Student Center located on the Illinois State University campus in Normal, Illinois.

Legal cases do not get more interesting than this!

The following is an interesting letter from Barton McNeil where he explains in detail all about the 2001 appeal as well as his forthcoming 2002 re-sentencing hearing. The Illinois Supreme Court found that sentencing persons to lifetime imprisonment was unconstitutional so required all persons previously sentenced to lifetime imprisonment, as was Bart by Judge Michael Prall following his bench trial, be resentenced to a range of between 20 and 100 years. Barton represented himself and could have done no worse then his own public defender Tracy Smith who seemed to be rowing with prosecutors all the time. Such that Barton fired him leading up to the resentencing hearing with Barton turning it into a 3 month process and being able to introduce evidence concerning Misook into his court file at long last. As up until his 2002 resentencing hearing, there was precious little about Misook contained anywhere.

The following are two letters expressing Barton’s disappointment in the Appellate Public Defender’s office in representing him in his important direct appeal. He did not once meet Ms. Arden Lang. For a long period of time Barton wondered whether Arden was a man or a woman.

And another one…

The following was the end of the road for Barton and his direct appeal

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