PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — Two men, convicted decades of murder, are hoping the Illinois Supreme Court will take up their case in the coming months.
Earlier this month, Barton McNeal and Jamie Snow filed their petitions for leave to appeal to the state’s highest court. The justices there can either decide to listen to the case or to leave a recent 4th District Appellate Court ruling alone.
The high court doesn’t have a set time table to decide but such a decision could take as little as two weeks or as long as 12 weeks for them to decide. If they take the case, then oral arguments would be set for later in the year or early next year.
Both men, who were found guilty in McLean County Circuit Court of murder, have claimed for years that they were wrongfully convicted and that they have managed to find new holes in their cases. Recently, the judges of the 4th District heard their most recent claims and rejected them. .Judges deny McNeil’s appeal in 1998 murder of his daughter
McNeal, 65, has been serving a virtual life sentence after being convicted of the suffocation death of his 3-year-old daughter, Christina, in 1998. He’s always maintained his innocence, pointing the finger at his ex-girlfriend, Misook Nowlin, saying she did it.
Nowlin, who now goes by Misook Wang, was convicted and sentenced to 55 years in prison in 2013 for killing her mother-in-law in an unrelated case.
Snow, 59, is serving a life sentence after he was convicted in 2001 for the 1991 armed robbery and murder of Bill Little, 18, who was at the Bloomington gas station that Snow allegedly robbed.
No murder weapon was recovered and DNA testing wasn’t done. Snow’s attorneys want that done and say if DNA could be pieced together, it would exonerate Snow.
But the 4th District, during a special “on the road” session at the Illinois State University campus in March, heard arguments on the men’s claims and rejected them. The appellate court got involved after a McLean County judge denied the same claims in 2024.
Both are represented by advocates from the Exoneration Project. McNeal is also represented by the Innocence Project.
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