WITHHELD EVIDENCE AGAIN

Northwestern University's Center for Wrongful Convictions has filed an appeal of Alan Beaman's murder conviction and 50 year prison sentence for the strangling and stabbing death of ISU student Jennifer Lockmiller in 1993.

Attorney Karen Daniel says she's never seen a case with more circumstantial evidence that wound up in a conviction. She thinks the high court might also consider the face the appeals court justices differed 2-to-1 when they twice considered the case and that there was a very strong dissent from the opposing justice who said the conviction should be thrown out.

Daniel says a key detective also withheld information about a time-line test using an alternativedriving route from Normal to Rockford that would have made it impossible for Beaman to have been in town to commit the murder of his former girlfriend.

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Background:

Now, I need to admit my bias. I went to high school with Alan, sat behind him in Geometry and English, talked with him on occasion, and always thought of him as upbeat, smart, kind and slackful. While Derf wrote of his creepy experiences in high school with Jeffrey Dahmer, my interactions with Alan were the exact opposite; Alan was the kind of guy who was into bands like They Might Be Giants, The Cure, had a focus on theater production; he seemed to have a pretty stable life. If I'm not mistaken, Alan was voted "Most School Spirit" in our graduating class.

Right now, Alan is serving a 50 year sentence for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Jennifer Lockmiller -- convicted in a case for which the prosecutor admits there was no physical evidence, no eyewitness, and no confession linking Alan to the crime. In addition, evidence giving Alan an alibi several hours away from the scene of the crime at his parents' home and other evidence pointing to another potential suspect was neglected in his initial trial. In spite of all of this, Alan lost his original appeal, and the Illinois Supreme Court had previously refused the reopening of his case.

I was mortified, reading newspaper accounts of the original trial (not on the web, since it occurred in the mid-90's), at the way that Alan's character was questioned -- arguments between him and his girlfriend that seemed normal and reasonable for any fading college relationship were being used to vilify him and provide the prosecutors with a motive, similar to the way the prosecution used involvement with Wicca and heavy metal music as the focus of the argument against the West Memphis Three. I'm concerned that the Discovery Channel documentary on Alan's case, referenced in my first link and airing this Saturday, will do the same and go for sheer sensationalism.

The huge number of exonerations of the innocent in Illinois over the past 20 years is rather frightening, so frightening that Governor George Ryan -- previously in favor of capital punishment -- called a moratorium on the death penalty in 2000 after more people on death row had been exonerated than put to death

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(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)