{"id":1989,"date":"2018-10-17T01:26:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T07:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freebart.org\/?p=1989"},"modified":"2021-07-09T01:27:14","modified_gmt":"2021-07-09T07:27:14","slug":"2018-oct-17-news-article-challenging-wrongful-convictions-can-take-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freebart.org\/?p=1989","title":{"rendered":"2018 Oct 17 News Article – Challenging wrongful convictions can take decades"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Edith Brady-Lunny |  Oct 17, 2018 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

BLOOMINGTON \u2014 When Bart McNeil insisted police return to his home following the death of his 4-year-old daughter in June 1999, he believed the information he wanted to share could help authorities find his child’s killer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McNeil’s theory that someone may have crawled through his daughter’s bedroom window and killed her included the name of a potential suspect: his former girlfriend Misook Nowlin.<\/strong><\/a> Bloomington police detectives had another theory that involved McNeil as the perpetrator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McNeil’s ongoing challenge to his murder conviction<\/strong><\/a> was one of two local cases discussed Tuesday by panelists for Illinois Wesleyan University’s event “Wrongful convictions? The pursuit of justice in Illinois.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The panel included Curtis Lovelace, a Champaign attorney who was exonerated in 2017 of murder in the death of his first wife; Tammy Alexander, co-founder of Justice for Illinois’ Wrongfully Convicted; Tara Thompson, an attorney with the University of Chicago’s Exoneration Project; and Willis Kern, co-host with Scott Reeder of Suspect Convictions, a podcast on the McNeil case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The event held at the Hansen Student Center on the Bloomington campus was organized by Amanda Vicary, associate professor of psychology at IWU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second case examined by the panel involved Jamie Snow, who was convicted of the 1991 killing of Bill Little,<\/strong><\/a> an attendant at a Bloomington gas station, during a robbery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Snow’s defense is seeking a hearing on potential new evidence in his case, said Thompson, his lawyer for 10 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been fighting in the courts for a decade. Jamie wants an opportunity to present evidence to the court that he\u2019s innocent,\u201d said Thompson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Snow is also trying to secure additional DNA and ballistics testing on evidence, said Thompson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lovelace described his two years spent in jail waiting for his first trial that ended with a hung jury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a former prosecutor, Lovelace endured taunts from some inmates. He also saw the other side of the legal system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI really got a feel for how desperate people were to have contact with their attorneys,\u201d said Lovelace, who works to help others seeking a review of their convictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kern said an innocence claim is much harder to prove after a conviction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re guilty until proven innocent\u201d after the trial, said Kern, a retired news director of WGLT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alexander said her organization supports families of wrongfully convicted defendants.  Delays in getting permission for new forensic testing can be costly to defendants, said Alexander.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Everybody needs to pay attention to that. It could be you next,\u201d said Alexander, who lives in Tennessee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year marked the first time<\/strong><\/a> the number of years lost to incarceration as a result of wrongful convictions topped 20,000, according to a report from the National Registry of Exonerations. The registry includes 2,265 exonerees, with 237 from Illinois and four from McLean County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The average amount of time spent behind bars before release is 8 years and 10 months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edith Brady-Lunny |  Oct 17, 2018  BLOOMINGTON \u2014 When Bart McNeil insisted police return to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-older-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","covernews-featured":"","covernews-medium":""},"author_info":{"display_name":"chris.ross","author_link":"https:\/\/freebart.org\/?author=3"},"category_info":"Older News<\/a>","tag_info":"Older News","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freebart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freebart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freebart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freebart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freebart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1989"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/freebart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1990,"href":"https:\/\/freebart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989\/revisions\/1990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freebart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freebart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freebart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}