By WMBD TV
BLOOMINGTON – Later this month, a Bloomington man hopes his attorneys can convince an appellate court panel that he has new evidence which will prove he did not kill his 3-year-old daughter nearly 30 years ago.
It’d be an early birthday present for Bart McNeil whose 66th birthday is about a month after a panel of three judges from the 4th District Appellate Court will hear his case during a special “on the road” session at Illinois State University.
The judges will hear two cases at the Bone Student Center on March 25, with one of them being McNeil’s. Normally, the appellate court hears cases in Springfield, but they often go on the road as a way to allow more people to see the appellate process.
Both Team McNeil and prosecutors for the state’s appellate prosecutor’s office will get time to argue their case. After that, the appellate court will issue a written opinion likely in a few months.
The case
McNeil was convicted in 1999 of killing his daughter, Christina and later sentenced to 100 years in prison.
In the hours after the girl’s lifeless body was found, McNeil called police back to his apartment at least four times, and at one point, vehemently requests detectives come there to collect what he calls evidence of his daughter’s murder.
Since his conviction, McNeil worked on his own appeals, but in 2012, his case was picked up by the Illinois Innocence Project and later the Exoneration Project joined the effort.
Suspect number one in his attorneys’ minds is his ex-girlfriend, Misook Nowlin. She is currently serving a 55-year sentence for murdering her mother-in-law, Linda Tyda, in 2011 and had previously served time for domestic violence and child abuse charges.
McNeil and his attorneys claim Nowlin admitted to killing Christina to her ex-husband but has since denied that. When she was called as a witness during a November 2023 hearing, she denied killing the little girl but asserted her constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination, known as “Pleading the Fifth” regarding questions about her relationship with McNeil.
What he is appealing now
Nowlin’s confession wasn’t known until years after his initial trial. McNeil’s attorneys sought to have it admitted over prosecutors’ objections. He tried to introduce that evidence through the post-conviction petition process. That form of appeal goes through the trial court, not the appellate court. There are three stages.
The first stage falls on a judge to “determine whether the petition is frivolous or patently without merit,” according to the state act outlining the process.
If the matter goes past the first stage, then a judge could appoint an attorney to help with the petition. At a third-stage hearing, a judge would hear evidence of newly discovered materials or claims of constitutional right violations that a defendant thinks would lead to a different outcome.
But last year, McLean County Circuit Judge William Yoder said no. The reason? The evidence that McNeil wanted to use at a new trial likely wouldn’t be legally allowed and beyond that, it wasn’t likely to tip the scales at a new trial, he ruled.
“The conclusive character of the new evidence is the most important element of an actual innocence claim,” the judge wrote in his 6-page ruling in February 2024. “The evidence supporting the post-conviction petition does not place the trial evidence in a different light or undermine the court’s confidence in the judgement of guilt.”
It’s Yoder’s decision that the appellate judges are being asked to overturn. Prosecutors say it isn’t admissible under the rules of evidence.
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