huge crowd for beaman updated X3
2 comments January 15th, 2008
Indeed, about 25 people packed into the Illinois Supreme Court’s oral argument room to hear Alan Beaman’s appeal this morning. That’s an extraordinary showing for an individual case.
Among them were his parents, who graciously stopped and spoke extensively to the media afterward (more on this later).
Beaman, a Rockford native, contends he was innocent of the murder for which he was convicted. He says he was in Rockford at the time and couldn’t possibly have committed the murder at Illinois State University in Bloomington-Normal, about a two-hour drive south of Rockford.
More background here.
Much of the argument Tuesday centered around phone calls made from the Beaman family home on the morning of the murder. The defense maintains Alan Beaman did make the calls at 10:37 a.m. and 10:39 a.m. and that he therefore couldn’t have been at ISU at noon — the official time of the victim’s death.
Prosecutors dispute the possibility that Beaman made those calls, and say that perhaps his mother made them (she says she did not). As evidence, prosecutors note that Beaman had visited a bank on the other side of Rockford on the morning of the murder and say he couldn’t have made it from the bank to his family home in time to make the calls.
The defense responds that prosecutors testing the time from the bank to the home drove the wrong route — through downtown Rockford. They say Beaman likely would not have taken that route and that he instead would have taken the U.S. 20 bypass around Rockford. Therefore, the defense maintains, he could have made those calls.
UPDATE 1
Carol Beaman, 63, said she definitely did not make the phone calls (see below post).
“I know I didn’t make the phone calls. That’s the key,” she said.
“For us, it’s also the key in terms of how we can support Alan at this stage and all along because as soon as we saw those phone calls, we knew we hadn’t made them. We knew that put him at our house. The second phone call was disconnected at 10:41. To get from our house on the far northwest side of Rockford to Bloomington-Normal between 10:41 and noon is just plain impossible. That’s an hour and 19 minutes to travel 139 miles. It’s just not possible.”
Alan’s father, Barry Beaman, joined his wife at the court. Barry, 64, is quality manager at Ingenium Aerospace in Rockford. He said there was no way to know whether the oral argument went in his son’s favor but added this:
“Certainly, the questions were I think appropriate. And the judges seemed to be extremely knowledgeable of the case. And if we have that, that’s certainly a good sign.”
UPDATE 2
Here’s Beaman’s mom on Alan’s relationship with Jennifer Lockmiller, Alan’s girlfriend and the murder victim:
“Very tumultuous, up and down. She was an extremely jealous young lady. They would break up and start up their relationship once every couple weeks. That was for 13 or 14 months they went together. Just a very rocky relationship, what I would call an unhealthy relationship. When he discovered that she was sleeping with his roommate, that was a good reason to break up with her not deal with her ever again. And that was a month before she died that he finally said, ‘I’m not going to have anything to do with her again.’”
And here’s what she said about her son’s character:
“I don’t believe he could have (committed the murder). He’s a very gentle kind of guy. Yeah, he has flyups like everybody does. But he’s really a very gentle kind of guy – the kind of person who would nurse a bird back to health if it flew into our window.”
His dad interjected: “He did that with a rabbit.”
His mom continued, “Right now he is a hospice volunteer at the prison. Dixon is one of two programs in the United States that have hospice programs, and he’s doing hospice there because he feels it’s something he can give back to people.”
UPDATE 3
The Illinois Supreme Court recently started posting video of oral arguments on its Web site. According to the court, video of the Beaman argument should be posted by Wednesday afternoon.
