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13th Juror Podcast
The Defense of Jamie Snow
00:40:52
The case against Jamie Snow hinges on witness testimony, but what if those stories don’t hold up? With no DNA, no weapon, and conflicting testimonies, the question becomes: was this a conviction based on truth or on a carefully constructed narrative? The defense argues that when you strip away unreliable testimony, what’s left may not be enough to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
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in the last episode, you heard the prosecution's case against Jamie Snow for the murder of 18 year old gas station attendant Bill Little in Bloomington, Illin. The story was built piece by piece, witness after witness, each one pointing to the same man. They told the jury to focus on what matched and not get distracted by inconsistencies. And if you do that, if you only look at the pieces that fit, the story feels clear and it's convincing. But what happens when you look at everything else? When you step back and look at the details that didn't match the witnesses who changed their stories and the evidence that never existed? What if everything you just heard only works because certain details and context were left out? Because that's exactly what the defense argued. They said those inconsistencies weren't small, they were critical. And when you hear the full story, it will make you question everything you knew about this case, these investigators and the prosecution. The prosecution says the voices all point in one direction. The defense says these voices can't be trusted. But it's the jurors who have the final say. This is the 13th juror podcast where we break down real court cases and put you in the juror's seat. Two sides, the same evidence. You decide what to believe. I'm your host, Brandi Churchwell. Today's episode is Illinois vs. James Snow, part two. The defense. In its opening statement, the state outlined a full narrative. From eyewitnesses who saw the assailant leaving Clark's gas station through the investigation, to multiple witnesses who would testify that Jamie confessed to murdering Bill Little. Once the opening statements for the prosecution were complete, it was time for the defense's opening statements. But in the trial of Jamie Snow, the opening statements for the defense were shockingly short. Jamie's attorney focused mostly on one fact. That the prosecution had presented a story about what people believed they saw or heard. But belief, they said, is not evidence. The defense argued that nobody actually saw Jamie shoot Bill Little. The defense told the jury that the fact that they've waited 10 years for the state to tell them what they believe isn't evidence. But they said there's one thing they're sure of. Jamie Snow is innocent. According to the evidence and testimony they presented. This is the defense's story. The defense didn't hold back when it came to the state's witnesses. They told the jury that most of the people testifying about what Jamie allegedly said were talking about conversations they had while they were under the influence of drugs, alcohol, or both. And not only that. These weren't witnesses who just made isolated mistakes in their past. These were individuals with long histories of serious crimes. Robbery, theft, sexual offenses. People who had been in and out of the system over and over again. And now, the defense argued, the state was asking the jury to believe them. They pointed out the contradiction. These are the same people the state prosecuted and locked up repeatedly. Yet now they're being presented as credible, trustworthy witnesses. The defense asked the jury to make it personal. If it were you or someone you loved on trial, is this the kind of evidence you would want used against you? They also argued that even the prosecution knew these witnesses had problems. Because the defense said, if you isolate any one of those stories, the prosecution's case falls apart. And their message was simple. If each piece is unreliable on its own, putting more of them together doesn't suddenly make them reliable. Zero plus zero plus zero is still zero. Jamie has always said the same thing, that they went to his in laws house like they always did on Easter, and then went home. He says he never went to Clark's gas station that night. In fact, he says he had never even been there at All. And when the news broke about the murder, he says he learned about it the same way everyone else did, watching it on tv. So how do you explain a dozen witnesses taking the stand, one after another, all telling some version of the same story? According to Jamie, there was only one way to respond. He had to tell his own story. And when he took the stand, that's exactly what he did. He went witness by witness, story by story, and told the jury something very different. The state said this all started weeks before the murder. Timothy Powell told jurors that he was driving around with Jamie, Jamie's wife Tammy, and his own sister Susan, stopping at gas stations along the way. He said Jamie joked about robbing one of them and then directed them towards Clark's, the same station where Bill Little would later be killed. To prosecutors, that sounded like planning, but Jamie said he had no memory of that ever happening. And when Powell's sister Susan took the stand, she backed Jamie up. She said, yes, they stopped at a gas station that day, but Jamie just went inside, bought a few things, and came back out. No talk of robbery and no trip to Clark's. Then came Bruce Roland. He told the jury that while they were incarcerated together, Jamie admitted to him the night of the murder he had been partying at a man named Brian Whitmer's house and went to Clark's to get cigarettes when Bill Little wouldn't give Jamie cigarettes for free. He later returned and shot Bill, then took money out of a drawer and took a couple cartons of cigarettes. But there were problems with that story. Jamie said he and Brian Whitmer weren't friends and hadn't been for years. And more importantly, Brian Whitmer was in jail that night. So there was no party. And then there was the inventory. The store manager testified that about $93 was missing, but no cigarettes were taken. So according to the actual records, that part of the story couldn't be true. When asked about Rowland, Jamie told the jury, I don't even know Bruce Rowland. Bill Moffatt also claimed Jamie confessed while they were incarcerated together. He said Jamie told him the robbery was about drugs and money, that they had run out, went to a gas station, and when the attendant tried to stop him, he shot him. He said Jamie was worried about being seen and mentioned another car pulling into the lot. But Jamie said he didn't know Moffatt like that at all. The first time he ever met him was in jail, and they were only housed together briefly. The night Moffatt claimed this confession happened, Jamie didn't even get back to his cell until after midnight. By then, Moffatt was already asleep. Jamie told jurors that conversation never happened. Ed Hammond testified that Jamie confessed to him in the prison yard. He said he needed money, used a pistol, and that Mark McGowan got rid of the gun. Then they went to McGowan's to get high afterwards. But that story also conflicted with other testimony from the state's own witness. Karen Strong, who was dating Martin McCowan, told the jury that Jamie and McCowan showed up at her house later that night asking if Jamie could stay there. She said no, and they left. On the stand, Jamie said he wouldn't have gone there in the first place because Karen didn't like him and he had his own place to go to. And then there's the logistics. Jamie said he and Hammond weren't even in the same unit at the prison. Different units meant different yards. He said he worked during the day and never went out to the yard at all. According to Jamie, he never even saw Hammond. He didn't even know he was at Centralia Prison until he read the statements in the discovery packet that was given to him by his lawyers. Then came Jody Winkler. He told jurors that in 1999, while living behind Jamie's house in Florida, Jamie admitted to him at the beach during a rainy day off of work that he had done it. He also claimed Jamie said he was laying low, trying to avoid being indicted. Jamie denied all of it. He said he never talked to Winkler about the case and even pointed out how the story didn't make sense, saying he doesn't go to the beach in the rain. As for laying low, Jamie admitted he was worried he had heard about the grand jury. But he said that advice came from a lawyer to stay put and wait, not to hide. The defense also pointed out that Winkler had previously told a corrections officer that he didn't know anything about the case at all. Ronnie Wright testified that Jamie admitted to committing a robbery and shooting someone before leaving for Florida and later told him to forget everything they had talked about. Jamie said he never would have told Wright anything because they weren't friends. In fact, they had a history, a prior altercation that left bad blood between them. Jamie said they were housed in the same pod but didn't interact. And as he started reading the statements being made against him, he became suspicious. So he confronted Wright in front of a corrections officer and asked him directly if he knew anything about the case. And most importantly, Wright said no. Randy Howard told the jury that Jamie picked him up from the bus station the day after the murder and immediately confessed before saying he was joking. Jamie said none of that made sense. He didn't have a phone, so Howard couldn't have called him for a ride. He didn't have a car, so he couldn't have picked him up. And as far as being best friends, Jamie said they were barely acquaintances. Ed Palumbo testified that he and Jamie ran into each other on the street and Jamie asked if he had read about him in the paper, then referenced the murder. Jamie agreed that interaction happened, but said Palumbo flipped it. Jamie told the jury he was the one who actually mentioned Palumbo being in the paper, not the other way around. Tammy Snow backed up Jamie's story, telling the jury she was in the car when it happened. He said Palumbo didn't respond. He just drove off. Jamie added that if he had done anything, Palumbo is the last person he would have told because he was, as Jamie said, quote, good friends with Rick Barkus, the detective who was investigating Jamie for the murder. Bill Gattis said he had grown up with Jamie and described one night after the murder when he went to an apartment where Jamie and some mutual friends were hanging out. When he walked into a bedroom, he saw Jamie and some other people who were crying. And when he asked about it, one of them told him Jamie had killed the kid at Clark's. He said he looked at Jamie, who didn't deny it. Jamie's response was simple. He said this unequivocally did not happen. He didn't see Bill Gattis in 1991 and had never even met Gattis until he walked through the courtroom doors to testify. The defense also brought in a witness to back Jamie up on this. He testified that no such scene happened and Gattis wasn't even there. Steve Shield testified that he was an old friend of Jamie's and had seen him shortly after the murder at a party when Jamie told him he was on the run for a robbery and that he had shot Bill Little. Jamie, however, denied all of this. He said that he wasn't even friends with she, that she was a child molester and Jamie refused to be around him. Besides that, Jamie said he didn't even know the person who was having the party and had never been to that house before. One witness testified that Jamie told her he was concerned about the composite scene sketches being hung all over town because he was worried that they looked like him. So he asked her and others to take them down and bring them to Him. She even said she saw a collection of them on his dining room table. But Jamie said this never happened. He didn't think the sketches looked like him at all, and he never told anyone to collect them. He said that witness was only about 14 or 15 years old at the time that this happened and lived in the same trailer park as he did. But he didn't know her well. One by one, Jamie went through each of these stories and told the jury the same thing. They're wrong, they're mistaken, or they're lying. But if the jury questioned those witnesses who claimed Jamie confessed, if they didn't trust the people telling those stories, there was still another layer to consider. The eyewitnesses who claimed they saw the man at Clark's that night. And the defense was ready to take on those witnesses as well. Starting with their descriptions, the prosecution asked the jury to focus on the details that matched and ignore the rest, pointing out that each witness described someone wearing a jacket, jeans, tennis shoes, and brown hair under a ball cap. But when you look closer, those descriptions begin to fall apart. Martinez described a light spring style tan jacket that came down to about his pockets. Luna described a black trench coat that reached the ankles. And Gutierrez described a leather motorcycle jacket. And the inconsistencies didn't stop there. The descriptions also didn't match Jamie Snow. Danny Martinez, the state's star witness, testified that the man he saw was about his height, around 5 foot 7. Jamie Snow was over 6ft tall at the time of the murder. Jamie had noticeable facial hair. Yet the composite sketch created from Martinez's description showed a clean shaven man. Gutierrez described a gold earring and a fresh scar on the suspect's chin. But Jamie had neither. And then there's one detail the defense says should have stood out immediately. At the time of the murder, Jamie Snow had a cast on his arm. Medical records showed it extended from his hand to his elbow. Not only would that make it extremely difficult to commit a robbery and fire a weapon, but none of the witnesses mentioned seeing anything like that. There were also concerns about what the witnesses actually could and couldn't see. Carlos Luna was only 14 years old at the time of the murder, and he testified that he saw a man from his bedroom window across the street. But that window wasn't directly across from Clark's. It was more than 200ft away. From that distance, Luna said he saw a man leave the store and walk toward the alley, but he didn't see anything else. Not Danny Martinez's car, which was parked between his house and the station, not the officers who had already arrived. Just one person. And even when Luna later viewed a lineup, he didn't make a positive identification. He said he tried to picture each person as the man he saw and chose the one who looked closest. But he never said he was certain. He never identified Jamie from photos either. Then there was Gerardo Gutierrez. Gutierrez, the witness who may have had the closest interaction. He described a man inside the store with a scar on his chin and an earring. Someone who appeared to be having a tense moment with Bill Little. Prosecutors believed his account placed the suspect inside the store just before the shooting. But even that testimony had issues. Gutierrez believed this happened around 8pm but the last confirmed transaction for $3 in gas was at 6:55pm the prosecution used that to support their timeline, but the defense argued it showed Gutierrez may have been mistaken about when he was even there at all. Gutierrez also testified that the situation didn't feel like a robbery to him. It seemed like two people arguing. He didn't see a weapon. He even said the man took out a cigarette and lit it, raising the question, if the motive was to steal cigarettes, why would he already have them? And despite being shown photos and attending a lineup, Gutierrez never identified Jamie as the man he saw. And finally, there was Danny Martinez, the state's most powerful witness. He told the jury he came face to face with the man in the parking lot just moments after hearing two loud bangs in court. He pointed directly at Jamie Snow and said he was 100% certain it was a compelling moment. But when you look at how Martinez described that encounter, the timeline becomes difficult to reconcile. He said he was crouched at the air pump when he first saw the man leaving the store backwards. Then he finished filling his tires, stood up and walked toward the entrance. He heard a noise, thought something might be wrong with his car, turned around, then turned back and almost ran into the man. For that sequence to happen the way he described it, that person would have had to have been moving incredibly slowly, almost standing still, while Martinez finished at the air pump, turned away and turned back again. And there's something else. Two officers were already there. Officer Jeff Pillo testified that he watched Martinez at the air pump, saw him finish, walk toward the store, then turn around and head back to his car. Sergeant Paul Williams had positioned himself where he could see the entrance, watching for anyone coming or going. Both officers were focused on that scene, and both said the same thing. They saw Martinez, but they never saw anyone else. So the question becomes, how could two trained officers responding to an armed Robbery and watching the scene closely. Ms. Someone moving through that same space. The prosecution pointed out that months before trial, Martinez looked at a photo of the original lineup and pointed to Jamie, saying, that's him, isn't it? They said he also saw Jamie's picture in the newspaper after his arrest and recognized him instantly. Those eyes, the ones he said he would never forget. But the defense highlighted a critical detail. Martinez had already seen Jamie before. He attended the original lineup in 1991, just months after the murder, and stood just feet away from him, but did not identify him. He was also shown multiple photographs of Jamie and didn't identify him there either. But years later, after seeing his face in the media, he was suddenly certain. The defense asked the jury to consider how that makes sense, because this. This identification was the foundation of the state's case. Then the defense asked Martinez about those eyes that he said he would never forget, but under oath, he couldn't even tell you their color. When it came time for closing arguments, the defense reminded the jury of one central There is no physical evidence connecting Jamie Snow to this crime. No DNA, no fingerprints, no weapon. Instead, they said, the entire case rests on a long line of witnesses, each telling their own version of events. And in order to believe those witnesses, the jury would have to do something very specific. Focus only on the parts of their stories that match the prosecution's theory and ignore everything else. The defense argued that the eyewitness identifications were unreliable. None of the three witnesses ever made a definitive positive identification of Jamie Snow, and their descriptions didn't match him anyway. The man described by the witness who supposedly came face to face with the suspect was six inches shorter than Jamie Snow. Then there were the informants. The defense asked the jury to take a hard look at who these witnesses were and why they were coming forward. They pointed out that many of these individuals claimed they had heard confessions years earlier, but said nothing at the time. Instead, they waited some until they were facing their own legal trouble before deciding to speak. According to the defense, that alone should raise concerns. They described the case as a parade of he said testimony and urged the jury to ask themselves a simple question. How much would you trust these people in your own life? Would you trust them around your family? Would you trust them with your money? Because, the defense argued, each of these witnesses came with their own criminal history and their own potential motives. Ed Palumbo, Bill Moffitt and Dawn Roberts each had three convictions. Bruce Roland had even more. In total, the defense pointed out, these witnesses collectively carried more than 40 serious criminal convictions. And yet the state was asking the jury to rely on their words to convict a man of murder. The defense didn't deny that Jamie had a past, but they argued that his actions after the crime weren't evidence of guilt. They were evidence of fear. Fear of being accused, fear of being wrongfully charged, fear of what could happen to him. And in their view, when you strip away the unreliable testimony and look at what's left, there simply isn't enough. The only just verdict, they said, is not guilty. With closing arguments complete, the case was now in the hands of the jury. 12 people tasked with answering one. Did the state prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Jamie Snow committed this crime? After hearing both sides, what would your decision be? Would you be certain enough to take away someone's freedom for the rest of their life? Would you be willing to bet his life on it or yours? In the end, the jury in the case of Illinois vs. James Snow returned a verdict of guilty. Jamie Snow was convicted of the murder of Bill Little and sentenced to life in prison. No chance of parole. More than 25 years later, he's still there. But what if the jury was asked to decide Jamie Snow's fate without all of the information? What happens when the story they're given isn't the full story? This episode has been about the defense's case at trial, the version they were allowed to present. But what if they had been able to tell everything? What if Jamie Snow's fate hadn't been shaped by a limited, tightly controlled narrative, but by the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? In 2008, the Exoneration Project in Chicago took on Jamie's case. And through their work and the work of others advocating for his freedom, new information began to surface. Information the jury never heard, information that had been withheld from the defense, and details about what was happening behind the scenes that only came to light years after the conviction. Take this, for example. Throughout the trial, jurors heard witnesses claim that Jamie talked about having other people with him during the robbery. But what they didn't know was that there actually was another person charged in this case. Susan Powell, who testified at Jamie's trial, had been charged with Bill Little's murder as well. The state alleged she was the getaway driver. She stood trial before Jamie did. She pleaded not guilty, hired her own private attorney, and was acquitted of every charge. Then there were concerns about Jamie's own defense team. Before the trial even began, Jamie reached out to the judge, raising serious issues about his attorneys. He said his lead attorney, G. Patrick Riley had recently suffered a stroke and that his health was affecting his ability to represent him. Jamie told the court that Riley hadn't even sat down with him to go over the case and had told him that he didn't need to. He also raised concerns about his second attorney, Frank Pissell, who was dealing with ongoing back problems and had already missed court appearances. Jamie said he didn't feel his lawyers were prepared, he didn't feel they were communicating with him, and he asked the court to delay the trial or appoint new counsel, but the judge denied that request. The defense also tried to bring in an expert, Dr. Jonathan Schuller, to explain the science behind eyewitness identification and the ways it can go wrong. The court approved funding for the expert, but then the prosecution moved to block that testimony. After a hearing, the judge agreed the jury would never hear from the expert, and the defense wasn't even allowed to fully explain what that testimony would have shown. There were also additional witnesses, people who could have challenged the credibility of key state witnesses, but they were blocked from testifying as well. One of them would have told the jury that Danny Martinez, the state's star witness, couldn't actually identify Jamie and was known for attention seeking. It's a lot to take in. One of the advantages of telling these stories the way I do is that I can take thousands of pages of transcripts, organize them, map out timelines, and piece everything together into a clear narrative. But that's not how trials work. In a courtroom, the story doesn't unfold cleanly. It comes out in fragments, one witness at a time. Questions have to be asked a certain way. Answers come in pieces. Timelines jump back and forth. And unless you're carefully tracking every detail, it can be incredible, incredibly difficult to see the full picture as it's happening. That presented a problem in this case because pretrial rulings limited what the jury was allowed to hear. Some evidence never made it in. Some witnesses never took the stand. And years later, additional information came to light that the defense didn't even have at the time. When you take all of that and put it back into the story, the picture starts to change. So before we close this episode, I want to do something different. I want to walk you through another version of this case, a more complete one, the version the jury never heard. What would a closing argument have sounded like if the defense had been allowed to present the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? This all started with the Freedom robbery. Even though this trial is about the armed robbery at Clark's Gas Station and the murder of 18 year old Bill Little. The February 1991 robbery at Freedom gas station in Bloomington became deeply woven into the state's case. The judge allowed some of that evidence to come in, but with limitations, which ultimately made parts of the testimony confusing and difficult to follow. Jamie was originally arrested in connection with the Freedom robbery, but those charges didn't stick. Another man eventually took responsibility, and when he was offered probation in exchange for testifying that he had shared that money with Jamie, he refused. He told the grand jury he never gave Jamie anything. And just like that, the case against Jamie for that robbery fell apart. But not entirely. Jamie was still convicted of obstruction of justice tied to that case. When police came to arrest him, he hid in his sister's attic for several hours before being found. And one witness later claimed Jamie encouraged her to leave the state so she couldn't testify. On the advice of his attorney, Jamie pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for obstruction. So now you have two cases happening within weeks of each other, starting to blur together. Because when Jamie was questioned after his arrest, detectives weren't just asking about the Freedom robbery, they were asking about Clarks, too. According to Jamie, those interrogations were aggressive and the questions moved back and forth between the two cases. He said when he talked about not wanting to incriminate himself, when he asked about deals, he was talking about the Freedom robbery, the case he had actually been charged with. And that matters because the very next day, a detective testified under oath that those statements were about the Freedom case, not the Clark's murder. But as time went on, that distinction started to fade. And the question becomes, why was Jamie still being pushed as a suspect in the murder at all? Because it wasn't the eyewitness descriptions. Those descriptions didn't match Jamie. They didn't even match each other. Different heights, different clothing, different details. The prosecution would later try to present those witnesses as if they were all describing the same man. But when you actually look at what they said, it doesn't hold up. What's far more likely is that maybe those witnesses saw different people at different times in a busy area on a holiday evening. But instead of following that possibility, the investigation began to narrow. And Jamie Snow, already tied to another robbery already known to police, became the focus. Not because the evidence led there, but because once the Freedom case and the Clarks case started to overlap, it became easier to make everything point to him. So let's step back for a second, because this case, the one that was presented to the jury, was Built to sound overwhelming. So many witnesses, so many stories, so many people saying the same thing. But when you slow it down and you actually look at how that story was built, it starts to look very different. Start with the identification. The prosecution told the jury that Jamie's reluctance to participate in the lineup showed consciousness of guilt. But what they didn't tell them is that everyone else refused, too. Jamie was the only one who was forced to participate. They didn't tell the jury that the man described at the scene had a fresh scar on his chin, something so noticeable, it became the defining feature of the suspect. A scar Jamie Snow did not have. They didn't tell them that Jamie passed a polygraph and that the lead detective, the. The one who spent seven years on this case, walked away believing Jamie wasn't the killer. But then the new detectives took over, and suddenly everything changed. Because this case wasn't rebuilt with physical evidence. It was rebuilt with people. People who had something to gain. And even though the witnesses denied getting any deals for their testimony during trial, it was then, according to Jamie's attorneys, that one by one, the witnesses started to shift. Karen Strong's original statements didn't incriminate Jamie, but by the time of trial, her story had changed and the charges against her husband seemed to disappear. Ed Palumbo was threatened with additional charges and more prison time if he didn't testify against Jamie. His girlfriend recanted, but Palumbo stuck to the story that helped him, and he was released from prison. Ed Hammond pointed to someone else. Until he didn't. Then suddenly it was Jamie, and he got a deal on his own armed robbery charge. Steve Schiel failed a polygraph and admitted Jamie never confessed, but still took the stand and said he did. Later, he recanted. Ronnie Wright admitted he made his statement out of anger. Jody Winkler and Kevin Shaw both said Jamie never talked about the case until they were facing charges of their own. Bill Moffat was staring down violent charges, including multiple counts of rape, when he testified against Jamie. But no deal was ever disclosed to the defense. Randy Howard, a known reward seeker who somehow set on a. A supposed confession until years later, Bruce Roland couldn't even identify Jamie in the courtroom, not even when the prosecutor stood directly beside him. But the state still asked the jury to believe Jamie confessed to him. And shortly after, Roland walked away with a significantly reduced sentence. And this wasn't random, because even a corrections officer testified that she was being pressured. Pressured to find informants let that sink in. Not witnesses coming forward on their own, not people reporting what they knew, but a system actively looking for people who would say something, anything. And when you put that next to how the story evolved, it starts to make sense. Because the timeline didn't fit, the evidence didn't fit, so the story had to change. That's where Bruce Rowland comes in, introducing the idea that Jamie went to the store twice, solving a timing problem the investigators couldn't explain any other way. That's where the idea of a getaway driver comes from. First one person, then another, until it finally lands on Susan Powell. And when Susan Powell refuses to cooperate, when she turns down deal after deal, when she forces the case to trial, she's acquitted. No evidence, no identification, nothing. And even then, the truth still doesn't make it to Jamie's jury. Because while Susan's team is investigating, they uncover something else. The state's star witness, Danny Martinez, the man who told the jury he was 100% sure, privately says Jamie Snow is not the man he saw. And when asked why he chose changed his story, he says, well, they must have the right guy. Not because he recognized him, not because he was certain, but because he trusted the case being built around him. That information kept out of Jamie's trial. So now ask yourself this. If you take away the deals, if you take away the pressure, if you take away the evolving stories, if you take away the witnesses who changed, recanted, contradicted themselves, or couldn't even identify him, what's left? No physical evidence, no reliable identification, no confession you can trust. Just a story. A story built piece by piece over years by people who had something to gain. And when you look at it that way, it doesn't look like a case that proved guilt. It looks like a case that constructed it. Does a case become convincing when it's repeated enough times? If you take a weak story and tell it 10 times, it doesn't become stronger. It just becomes louder. And what happened in the case against Jamie Snow isn't happening in a vacuum. Illinois has one of the highest wrongful conviction rates in the country. And right here in McLean county, the same place this case was prosecuted, there have been multiple murder convictions from the same era that didn't hold up. Alan Beaman, Eric Drew, Donald Whelan, all convicted, all later exonerated. Let that sink in. These are all wrongful convictions under the same prosecutor's office. And in each of those cases, one of the key issues was the same evidence that was never disclosed to the defense. Evidence the jury never saw. Those men lost decades of their lives because of it. And that forces a Question in this case, is this an outlier or is it part of something bigger? Because Jamie Snow is still in prison. So is Barton McNeil. Both prosecuted out of the same office, both represented by innocence organizations, both claiming critical evidence was withheld. Both still fighting years later to prove what they've said from the beginning, that they are innocent. And here's the reality of that fight. The post conviction process is long, it's uphill, and it rarely ends in favor of the person appealing. Most convictions are appealed, very few are overturned, and even fewer result in exoneration. So imagine what that means if you're innocent. Imagine being sentenced to spend the rest of your life in prison for something you didn't do. Never sleeping in your own bed again, never sitting at the dinner table with your family, Never showing up to your child's game or your grandchild's birthday. When everything is taken from you like that, there's only one thing left to fight. And that's exactly what Jamie Snow says he's been doing for decades, Maintaining then and now that he did not commit this crime. But here's the part we can't lose sight of. Because at the center of all of this is an 18 year old kid named Bill Little. A son, a family member, a young man who showed up to work on Easter Sunday and never made it home. Justice for Bill Little matters. It always has. But justice doesn't just mean a conviction. It means the right conviction. Because if the wrong person is held accountable, then justice hasn't been served. It's been delayed or worse, denied. So the question that remains isn't just what the jury decided back then. It's what you think now. After hearing both sides of the same evidence, the prosecution says the number of people who told the same story proves it must be true. The defense says those stories were shaped incentivized and unreliable. And now, just like those jurors, you're left to decide what you believe and where the truth really lies. Next week, we go beyond the courtroom and straight to the source. For the first time in this series, you'll hear directly from Jamie Snow himself, along with one of the people fighting to prove his innocence. What he says about that night, the investigation and the years he spent behind bars may change the way you see this case entirely. Thirteenth Juror is an Audio Chuck production hosted by Brandi Churchwell. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. You can follow 13th Juror on Instagram @13th JurorPodcast. I think Chuck would approve.
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Everyone's told a lie. But what happens when one lie becomes a life, a movement, a conspiracy. I'm Josh Dean, host of Chameleon, and I uncover true stories of deception. Scams so intimate and convincing, they fooled the people closest to them. These aren't strangers. They're lovers, friends, and trusted allies. Because the most dangerous cons don't feel like crimes. They feel personal. Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.