2025 March 27 NEWS ARTICLE WGLT NPR – Barton McNeil and Jamie Snow seek to overturn new trial denials in back-to-back hearings at ISU
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WGLT | By Lauren Warnecke
Published March 25, 2025 at 5:29 PM CDT
Barton McNeil’s defense attorney Karl Leonard delivers oral arguments to Justices Amy Lannerd, left, and Peter Cavanagh at an appellate court hearing Tuesday, March 25, 2025, at Illinois State University.
The fate of two Twin City men claiming they were wrongfully convicted of murder now lies in the hands of the Illinois appellate court.
Appellate justices heard back-to-back arguments Tuesday at Illinois State University on behalf of Jamie Snow and Barton McNeil, two men convicted of unrelated murders in Bloomington in the 1990s.
McNeil and Snow were denied their requests seeking new trials by the circuit court. Tuesday’s oral arguments at ISU were an opportunity to try and overturn those rulings. Neither McNeil or Snow were present.
A ‘gag order’ prevented McNeil’s theory of the crime
McNeil is serving a 100-year sentence for the 1998 suffocation death of his 3-year-old daughter, Christina. McNeil has always said his ex-girlfriend, Misook Nowlin, broke into his Bloomington apartment and suffocated his daughter to death. His attorneys have asked to introduce evidence that Nowlin’s DNA was found in Christina’s bed the night she was killed.
At Tuesday’s hearing, justice James Knecht questioned defense attorney Karl Leonard about several explanations about why hair and other DNA belonging to Nowlin could be in McNeil’s apartment. Leonard claimed Nowlin had never lived in that apartment and said McNeil has evidence of Christina’s sheets having been freshly washed. In his statements, Leonard said additional forensic evidence such as a misplaced window fan, torn screen and upset spider webs outside the home support their assertion that an intruder committed the crime.
“The fact that Christina died in McNeil’s care has always been the only real evidence of his guilt. Everything else is circumstantial,” Leonard said.
In 1999, McNeil opted for a bench trial, declining his right to a jury trial. According to reporting by the Bloomington Pantagraph at the time, his attorney said, “the tendency of juries to sympathize with child victims may have been a factor.”
At a news conference after Tuesday’s hearing, McNeil’s cousin Chris Ross said McNeil’s public defender was prohibited from introducing alternative theories at the bench trial, including evidence connecting Misook Nowlin to the crime.
“Basically, for Bart’s trial, he had a gag order on him which was not to mention anything about Misook or the violent relationship that she perpetrated against Barton and Christina,” he said, “nor bring up anything about how Misook had been in a smothering incident where she was found guilty of abusing her own child a couple of months after Barton had been arrested.”
Nowlin was found guilty of domestic battery in 1999 and sentenced to 150 days in jail. There’s also her conviction for the 2011 choking death of her mother-in-law, Linda Tyda. She was sentenced to 55 years in prison for that crime.
In February 2024,McLean County judge William Yoder denied McNeil’s request for a new trial, despite assertions that Nowlin confessed to killing Christina to two relatives. According to Yoder, that evidence would likely be inadmissible at a new trial, but McNeil’s attorneys argue all evidence should have been considered in its totality. Nowlin has previously denied killing Christina McNeil, but later invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Prosecutors at Tuesday’s hearing claim the two strangulations are different enough that Nowlin’s other crime is not relevant. Her Fifth Amendment right was related to her own appeals process, they said, and not an admission of guilt to killing Christina McNeil.
‘Our sympathy is with the trial judge’
Emily Bollinger / WGLT – Justice Robert Steigmann presiding over Jamie Snow’s Illinois appellate court hearing Tuesday, March 25, 2025, at Illinois State University.
Like McNeil, Jamie Snow has long maintained innocence while serving a life sentence for the shooting death of gas station attendant Bill Little during a 1991 robbery in Bloomington.
Snow’s team from the Exoneration Project is requesting modern testing techniques be applied to fingerprints and blood collected at the crime scene — fingerprints and blood that did not incriminate Snow, claims the defense.
“Today, there’s no question if this case happened, that the first thing the police would do is run whatever prints they had and run whatever DNA evidence they had,” said defense attorney Debra Loevy. “Mr. Snow is just asking for the opportunity to do that at no expense to the state — at no harm to the state.”
Presiding justice Robert Steigmann pressed hard against Loevy’s suggestion that the trial judge acted in error by not requesting testimony on fingerprint testing, including samples from the gas station door that could have been touched by hundreds, if not thousands, of people.
“We’re all former trial judges and our sympathy is with the trial judge,” Steigmann said. “At this point, you’re asking us to reverse the trial judge’s order because he didn’t order fingerprint expert testimony on exhibit X. But if [the defense] has not asked for that, how are we supposed to reverse the trial judge based on a request he never heard?”
Loevy urged to court to “put this case to rest, which I get the impression is a thorn in the side of the court.”
“Counsel,” Steigmann said to the Exoneration Project attorney, “no case is put to rest. You know that better than anyone.”
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 claimed an overzealous state’s attorney and police detectives mishandled the case, which moved his circuit court appeals to Schuyler County. McLean County prosecutor Brad Rigdon faced questioning, but was not aware of any prosecutorial misconduct. The state’s attorney at the time, Charles Reynard, retired in 2015. Bloomington Police detectives have since also wavered on their department’s handling of the case.
Despite Steigmann’s comments, the justice panel pressed prosecutor Allison Paige Brooks on Loevy’s theories, particularly surrounding the incentivized testimony and unreliability of eyewitness testimony years later.
“Some of the incentives were disclosed and admitted to,” Brooks said. “If the jury believes that the defendant was guilty because of these admissions, and the defendants had opportunities for other post-conviction petitions to try to undercut evidence of those admissions … the DNA evidence would not necessarily be linked to the crime.”
Two other suspects were picked out of a lineup in 1991. Loevy’s request is to test forensics to include or exclude those suspects. Brooks argued this is speculative and does not meet the defense’s burden of advancing Snow’s claim of innocence.
In both cases, the Illinois appellate court could recommend that evidence review continues, the justices could suggest a new trial, or they could throw the convictions out. Ross expects to wait 6-8 weeks for a decision, but said there’s no time constraint placed on the process.
If denied, the next step for Snow and McNeil are to appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court. Ross said his family is prepared to take the case to the federal level and appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.
“We hope that the court can in their wisdom pass judgment that Bart deserves a new trial, that Bart can be standing on fresh grass,” Ross said. “Something he hasn’t done in 27 years is to take off his shoe and walk on fresh grass, or to see a sunrise, or to see a moon set. We hope that he can become part of all of us in the future because he deserves it. He’s innocent.”
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