Alan Beaman was transported back in time Tuesday night to when his life changed forever with the utterance of a single word.
“Guilty.”
“I’ve never had a more surreal moment in my life than the moment of hearing that guilty verdict,” said Beaman, recounting his 1995 murder conviction. “I remember having a certain calm about it because I was in shock.”
Beaman visited Illinois State University’s campus on Tuesday, October 22, to take part in “Wrongful Conviction: A Conversation with Alan Beaman and his Attorney” at Braden Auditorium. It marked his first public comments in McLean County since he was awarded a $5.4 million settlement from the Town of Normal earlier this year on the eve of a civil trial for malicious prosecution. The settlement capped a 30-year legal odyssey for the former Illinois Wesleyan University student that began when his ex-girlfriend, Illinois State student Jennifer Lockmiller, was murdered in her off-campus apartment in August 1993.
Over those three decades, Beaman and his counsel navigated criminal and civil cases, appeals, petitions, and exhaustive searches for new evidence. Initially convicted of the crime and sentenced to 50 years in prison, Beaman had his conviction vacated by the Illinois Supreme Court in 2008 after spending 13 years incarcerated. He was granted a certificate of innocence by the McLean County Circuit Court in 2013 and pardoned by then-Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn in 2015.
Tuesday’s talk was attended by more than 200 people. The two-hour event included a Q&A session where attendees submitted wide-ranging questions about the evidence used against him, why he didn’t cut his long hair during his criminal trial, how he remained hopeful and survived prison life, and how it felt to be back in McLean County.
“It’s definitely a moment,” Beaman said with an uneasy laugh. “I was pretty nervous coming here.”
“This is a story that affects Illinois State, because the victim of the crime was an ISU student, and the other parties involved are the Town of Normal and its police department. So, it certainly is of interest to our ISU community.”
—Director of Legal Studies Tom McClure ’76, M.S. ’01
Beaman said Tuesday wasn’t his first return visit to McLean County. He’s made several trips to the McLean County Courthouse on behalf of Jamie Snow and Barton McNeil as they appeal murder convictions. Every trip back to McLean County stirs emotions, Beaman said.
“I don’t like driving through here. It’s a little nerve-wracking sometimes, but I make myself do it. Life must go on,” he said. “I don’t blame all you guys, but the power is in your hands—the community—to give voice to these issues, and to say with your vote, with your public expression, that this is not OK, and it needs to change.”
Beaman was joined onstage Tuesday by Jeffrey Urdangen, his attorney of 28 years. Beaman is one of 10 individuals for whom Urdangen helped overturn convictions. They combined to serve 135 years behind bars.
“Alan had one of the great alibis I had ever seen,” Urdangen said. “He was 130 miles away at home (in Rockford) when this crime was committed. It was virtually impossible for him to have, in the timeline the prosecution themselves had carved out, to have gotten to where the victim lived, killed her, and then gotten back home.”
Urdangen said law enforcement and prosecutors “didn’t care about any of that,” as they were “blinded by confirmation bias.”
The talk was moderated by longtime local reporter Edith Brady-Lunny, who covered many of Beaman’s court proceedings as a legal affairs reporter for The Pantagraph and, later, as a correspondent for WGLT. Brady-Lunny said the Town of Normal never admitted any wrongdoing in reaching the settlement with Beaman.
“To the average person, their understanding is that nobody gives you $5.4 million if they don’t have to,” she said. Brady-Lunny added that she requested a case status update from the Normal Police Department after Beaman’s settlement in March but received no response.
The event was free and open to the public. It was sponsored by Illinois State’s departments of Politics and Government, Criminal Justice Sciences, Sociology and Anthropology, and History, the School of Communication, and the College of Arts and Sciences, with support and partnership from the School of Social Work and WGLT.
Illinois State Director of Legal Studies Tom McClure ’76, M.S. ’01, organized the event and introduced the panel. He said the topic of the talk was an important one to the Illinois State and local communities.
“This is a story that affects Illinois State, because the victim of the crime was an ISU student, and the other parties involved are the Town of Normal and its police department,” McClure said. “So, it certainly is of interest to our ISU community.”
Today, Beaman is a husband and father, and some of his family was in attendance. Beaman works as an engineer and trainer in the manufacturing industry. He’s a youth bowling coach and church leader.
Urdangen called Beaman the “most well-adjusted” of all the people for whom he’s helped overturn convictions. “It’s very difficult to overcome what that does to your psyche, to your emotional and psychological and physical health, to be wrongly convicted and wrongly incarcerated,” Urdangen said. “It’s a very hard readjustment period when you are released.”
Beaman will always carry his experience with him, and he’s willing to share it if that prevents it from happening to someone else. For the past year-and-a-half, he’s trained police cadets enrolled in the Wrongful Conviction Awareness and Avoidance (WCAA) program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Police Training Institute.
“They’re teaching those guys how to handcuff somebody and subdue them, but then also talking about why we need to make sure we got the right person when we do that,” Beaman said. “I’ve even had cadets from Normal and from Bloomington and from McLean County. I’m trying to do something to improve on this, to improve the culture in policing.”
Beaman is one of 3,604 individuals recognized in the National Registry of Exonerations, a database of exonerations dating back to 1989 maintained by the University of California Irvine, University of Michigan, and Michigan State University. Those individuals were cumulatively incarcerated for more than 32,750 years.
