Alan Beaman: Wrongful Conviction, Pardon, and $5.4M Settlement

Alan Beaman’s wrongful conviction is one of Illinois’s most consequential exoneration cases: an Illinois State University student named Jennifer Lockmiller was murdered in 1993, Beaman was convicted of killing her in 1995, and he spent more than 13 years in prison before the Illinois Supreme Court unanimously threw out his conviction in 2008 after finding that prosecutors had hidden evidence pointing to another suspect. He later received a certificate of innocence, a gubernatorial pardon, and, in 2024, a $5.4 million settlement from the Town of Normal.

The 1993 Murder and the Three Men Police Looked At

Jennifer Lockmiller, 21, was found dead on August 28, 1993, in her apartment near the Illinois State University campus in Normal. She had been strangled with the cord of a clock radio and stabbed with scissors that were left in her chest. Medical examiners placed her death between August 25 and August 27, and investigators zeroed in on the afternoon of August 25.¹

There was no sign of forced entry or theft. Normal Police Department detectives Tim Freesmeyer, Dave Warner, and Frank Zayas turned to men Lockmiller had been involved with. Three names came up: Beaman, her ex-boyfriend of about a month; Michael Swaine, her then-boyfriend; and Larbi John Murray, a drug dealer she bought marijuana from and had a sexual relationship with.¹

How the State Built Its Case Against Beaman

The case was entirely circumstantial. Beaman had ended a difficult year-long relationship with Lockmiller in late July 1993, and prosecutors argued he was obsessed with her. Their theory required a brutally tight timeline: Beaman had to have left a bank in Rockford at 10:11 a.m. on August 25, driven roughly 125 miles south to Normal, killed Lockmiller inside about 15 minutes, and driven back to Rockford by early afternoon.²

The supporting evidence was thin. A friend, Morgan Keefe, testified she “knew” who did it without any firsthand information. Detective Freesmeyer told investigators a fingerprint had been found on the murder weapon, a claim later shown to be false.¹ On May 16, 1994, State’s Attorney Charles Reynard and Assistant State’s Attorney James Souk met with detectives; Souk reportedly said, “I think we’ve got our guy,” and a warrant was issued the next day.

On April 1, 1995, a McLean County jury convicted Beaman of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 50 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections.³ At trial, Souk told jurors there were only three possible suspects and that the other two had verified alibis, leaving Beaman as the only possibility. His direct appeal lost 2-1, with Fourth District Appellate Court Justice Robert W. Cook writing in dissent that he would have reversed for insufficient evidence.⁴

What Prosecutors and Police Hid

Souk’s statement to the jury depended on the claim that other suspects had been cleared. In reality, Larbi John Murray had not been cleared, and the defense never learned what police knew about him.

Murray lived about a mile and a half from Lockmiller’s apartment. She owed him roughly $20 at the time of her death. He had a documented history of domestic violence and steroid abuse, and at the time of Beaman’s trial he had pending charges for domestic battery and drug possession with intent to deliver.⁵ Police records described him pinning his girlfriend to the floor and elbowing her repeatedly in the chest.⁶

None of that reached Beaman’s lawyers. Neither did several specific pieces of evidence about the investigation of Murray himself:

Murray took a polygraph but refused to follow the examiner’s instructions, causing the test to be terminated. The examiner noted the noncompliance could have been intentional. The report never went to the prosecutor’s office or to the defense.
Murray first told investigators he was out of Bloomington from August 24 until September 1. After police spoke with his girlfriend, he admitted he had actually been in Bloomington on August 25. Phone records backed that up.
A second polygraph was scheduled for October 12, 1993. Murray did not show up.¹

Before trial, prosecutors moved to exclude any evidence about Lockmiller’s relationships with men other than Beaman and Swaine, telling the court they had “no evidence” anyone else, including Murray, could have committed the crime.

The alibi evidence was shaped the same way. Detective Freesmeyer ran timed test drives between the Rockford bank Beaman visited and his family’s home. He found a bypass route that took 25 minutes, fast enough for Beaman to have been home when phone calls were placed from the house that morning. Freesmeyer left that result out of his reports and testimony and presented only a 31-minute downtown route that made the alibi look impossible.² Police also suppressed a statement from Lockmiller’s neighbor, David Singley, who said someone left her apartment around 2:00 p.m. on August 25, a time at which Beaman was 125 miles away.⁷

How the Conviction Was Overturned

Attorneys Karen Daniel and Jeffrey Urdangen of Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions took Beaman’s case in post-conviction. They built the record showing what prosecutors had hidden about Murray and how the jury had been misled on the timeline.⁴

On May 22, 2008, the Illinois Supreme Court unanimously reversed Beaman’s conviction, finding a violation of Brady v. Maryland, the rule requiring prosecutors to disclose evidence favorable to the defense. The court called the State’s original case “tenuous” and said it was probable the jury would have acquitted had it known about Murray.⁸ The court described an “utter disregard for the truth” in the investigation, finding that police had locked onto Beaman from day one and shaped evidence to keep him there.⁷

Beaman was released on June 26, 2008, after more than 13 years in prison. The McLean County State’s Attorney’s office chose not to retry him, and all charges were formally dropped on January 29, 2009.⁴

Certificate of Innocence, DNA Results, and Pardon

Post-conviction DNA testing found two unknown male DNA profiles on Lockmiller’s body and clothing. Neither matched Beaman.³ After those results, McLean County prosecutors dropped their opposition to his innocence petition. The Circuit Court of McLean County granted Beaman a certificate of innocence on April 29, 2013, and that year he received $182,000 from the state’s exoneree compensation fund.

On January 9, 2015, outgoing Illinois Governor Pat Quinn pardoned Beaman based on actual innocence.⁴

The $5.4 Million Civil Settlement

In 2010, Beaman sued the Town of Normal, former detectives Freesmeyer, Warner, and Zayas, and former prosecutors Reynard and Souk, alleging malicious prosecution, conspiracy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The federal civil rights claims were dismissed on immunity grounds: prosecutors Reynard and Souk were held to have absolute prosecutorial immunity in 2012,⁹ and in 2015 the Seventh Circuit granted qualified immunity to the officers.¹⁰

The state malicious prosecution claims survived. On July 29, 2021, the Illinois Supreme Court reversed a lower-court summary judgment for the officers in a 4-2 decision, holding that a prosecutor’s independent charging decision does not automatically shield police when officers played a significant role in the prosecution by supplying misleading information.¹¹ The case was sent back for trial.

With a jury trial set for April 2024, the parties settled on March 25, 2024. The Normal Town Council unanimously approved the $5.4 million payment on April 1, 2024.¹² At least $4 million came from the town’s liability insurance pool, with up to $1.4 million from the general fund.¹³ The town admitted no wrongdoing, and Mayor Chris Koos said the settlement was “solely related to risk.”¹⁴ Beaman’s attorneys, Locke Bowman and Jeffrey Urdangen, called it “welcome, though hardly sufficient.”

Jennifer Lockmiller’s Murder Remains Unsolved

Beaman’s exoneration did not resolve the underlying crime. Jennifer Lockmiller’s killing is still open, the unknown male DNA profiles from her body have never been matched to any identified individual, and the Illinois State Police is investigating at the request of the Normal Police Department.¹⁵

Beaman Today

Beaman works as an engineer and trainer in the manufacturing industry and lives with his family in the Rockford area. He trains police cadets through the Wrongful Conviction Awareness and Avoidance program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Police Training Institute, teaching recruits from departments across central Illinois about the investigative failures that produce wrongful convictions. In October 2024, he returned to Illinois State University, the campus where Lockmiller had been a student, to speak to an audience of more than 200 people.¹⁶

1
MacArthur Justice Center. Beaman Opinion
2
FindLaw. People v. Beaman
3
WGLT. Alan Beaman’s Civil Case Against Town of Normal and Former Officers Is Set for Trial
4
Northwestern Center on Wrongful Convictions. Alan Beaman
5
Justia. Beaman v. Freesmeyer, No. 14-1195
6
MacArthur Justice Center. Beaman Supreme Court Brief
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MacArthur Justice Center. Beaman Petition for Leave to Appeal
8
MacArthur Justice Center. Beaman v. Normal
9
vLex. Beaman v. Souk
10
FindLaw. Beaman v. Freesmeyer
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Illinois Supreme Court. Beaman v. Freesmeyer, 2021 IL 125617
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25 News. Beaman’s Lawyers Say $5.4 Million Settlement Is Welcome Though Hardly Sufficient
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WGLT. Normal Council Authorizes $5.4 Million Settlement With Alan Beaman
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WGLT. Alan Beaman
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WGN TV. Who Killed Jennifer? A True Crime Special From WGN Films
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Illinois State University. Prison to Purpose: Alan Beaman Shares His Experience to Educate, Raise Awareness of Wrongful Convictions in Campus Talk