Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied: What Is The Prosecutor’s Office In Madison County Illinois Hiding In The James Evans Conviction Part VII
Posted by David Adams on March 30th, 2020
When young Nekemar Pearson went missing in the town of Alton Illinois back in 1995, he was on court ordered home supervision while awaiting prosecution on criminal charges for murder. The youth was alleged to have killed Willie Nichols. One night when Pearson didn’t return home at the time he was ordered to, his mother filed a missing person report with Alton Police, but on the exact day he was alleged to have gone missing, there were eyewitness accounts that the youth had reportedly been seen running from Nichols’ family members, who pursued him, and were shooting at him as he fled. The police and the prosecutors office knew about this information, but never pursued this aspect of the case. It was even rumored that Pearson was hiding out to avoid becoming a casualty of a retaliatory murder.
There are still to this day a volume of theories about who may have killed Pearson, but back then, the police made a man named James Evans the primary suspect in the Pearson murder case, and subsequently set a series of criminal acts in motion to obtain an indictment and conviction of Evans, which resulted in him being sent to prison for over a century. The motive used by the state was that Evans killed Pearson in retaliation for a home invasion that Pearson and accomplices allegedly kidnapped Evans, beat him, robbed him of his vehicle, and stole expensive speakers from Evans’ truck and sold them within the community.
Rumors around Alton during that time depicted Evans as a drug dealer who had money, prompting the Pearson youth and others to invade Evans’ home in a robbery that only landed the brazing bandits a net of $35 dollars and the money they received from the sale of his car speakers. While Evans remained clueless regarding the identity of the masked men who had robbed him, he would eventually learn that it was Pearson who had sold his speakers. So, when the Pearson youth went missing, some say one of Pearson’s accomplice and Alton cop Bradley Wells concocted, and spent the theory around Alton that Evans must have retaliated against him for the home invasion robbery.
Strangely though, Alton police (Bradley Wells) obtained the details regarding the robbery from one of Pearson’s accomplices, who not only admitted his involvement along with Pearson, but was even allowed to go home the same day without any criminal charges being filed against him. That aspect of the case has raised eyebrows and sparked suspicion within the community for years, based on what people have conveyed to TPC. Its an unlikely outcome for anyone who admits to police such a violent crime and then is allowed to roam free. The wide speculation regarding how the story that Evans killed Pearson was created, may have been the result of a deal brokered by dirty cops and a violent felon, who conveniently got out of a robbery and abduction beef for essentially playing ball with Wells and the prosecutors office to help frame Evans for the Pearson killing.
With the information implicating Pearson and others in the robbery and abduction of Evans, Alton police, allegedly spearheaded by Bradley Wells, set out to develop a complete fabricated conspiracy of how and why Evans murdered Nekemar Pearson, while the fact that the youth had been pursued after in a violent manner by members of Willie Nichols family, was an extremely pervasive piece of discovery in the case and an incident that just so happened to have occurred on the same day he went missing, and also just happened to be on the one year anniversary of Willie Nichols’ killing that had allegedly been committed by Pearson. Its simply incredulous that this information never made it into the Evans case during the trial.
None of these facts mattered to Alton police, but you would have to understand the culture of policing in the town during that time to fully grasp how Evans’ story became an American Tragedy. Evans’ fate appeared to be sealed when he caught the eer of Bradley Wells, who suspected that Evans was a lowlife neighborhood drug dealer (an allegation, despite testimony from state witnesses who say he was, Evans has never been proven to be a drug dealer) that Wells had a hard on for. People in Alton who have been in Wells’ office back during the 1990’s, say that Wells had two photos on his desk. One of his family and one of Evans.
I’m told that Wells fostered a hatred for Evans that ran so deep, that nearly everyone who got into trouble back then were offered plea deals, money, and even had charges dropped against them in exchange for any dirt they could provide that would help nail Evans with criminal charges in the Pearson homicide. Also, while I have exposed details of individuals who took deals from the state testifying to fabricated accounts that were manufactured and fed to them by the prosecutor’s office, I won’t go in depth by identifying them in this article, to avoid showing Mr. Evans’ hand with his case now being appealed before courts.
However, I will say this. Rarely has there ever been a capitol murder case that resulted in the conviction of a defendant, when there was absolutely no evidence whatsoever connecting the defendant to the crime. The state marched witness after witness into the courtroom and one after the other, they were all dressed in jail or prison garb, and had some sort of plea deal on the table with the state in exchange for their false testimony against Evans in the Pearson murder case. All along while the state knew that Pearson hadn’t been killed on the day they told the Evans trial jury he was. In fact, the state had an affidavit from an Alton School Police Resource officer (Cooley) who had arrested Pearson in the past, indicating that he saw Pearson and another youth walking down the street 10 days after the day the state told the jury that Evans had killed the youth.
The suppression of this highly exculpatory evidence is discovery that was never disclosed to Evans’ defense, and its doubtful that a jury would have found him guilty of murder when the alleged victim was reportedly still alive over a week after the day prosecutors were claiming he was killed. Also, these details were not known by Mr. Evans until years after he had been convicted and was serving a 107 years sentence.
Then there is the issue with the audio tapes the state played for the jury that they say is Evans conspiring to kill his alleged co-conspirators in the Pearson murder. Evans has always contended that the audios were tapes of multiple conversations edited to appear as one. Which is why Evans has for years been seeking to obtain originals of the audios for forensic testing purposes to determine their authenticity. However, for some reason the audios played for the jury during Evans’ trial is an achilles heel for the state prosecutor’s office in Madison County Illinois, who despite several court orders for them to turn over trial audios to the Evans defense, has failed to do so.
The arguments are simple in this case and should have been a rudimentary aspect of post conviction, which is the appellate process in which every convicted criminal has a constitutional right. Despite the fact that Evans was convicted and committed to a state correctional facility to serve out his term, he still has rights under state and federal law. He has been denied many of these rights though. The state of Illinois has long established that post conviction proceedings should take no more than a little over a year to complete. Mr. Evans has been incarcerated for nearly 22 years and his appeal has been available for adjudication since 2001. His case has such an inordinate delay, that its entirely suspicious in terms of how the judge has allowed this process to linger for so long, especially considering such blatant defiance of the court by the Madison County prosecutor’s office by not releasing discovery.
Its highly unlikely that the original trial judge who is also seated over Evans’ post conviction proceedings, would rule adversely against a trial and conviction that he adjudicated. So what exactly is the delay here, and why hasn’t the court under this judge sanctioned prosecutors or held them in contempt for their failure to comply with a volume of court orders directing them to turn over discovery? We must be mindful that without out Evans’ claims being properly adjudicated, he can’t move forward through the appellate process and pray before a higher court. Without those audio tapes that are a very crucial element of his appeal, he is stuck in a holding pattern and can’t move forward. Where are those audios that were played during his original trial? That’s the million dollar question. They are either legitimate recordings or like Evans has claimed, there is some funny business going on.
Therefore, in the minds of the all white trial jury that found Evans guilty without a shred of physical evidence, with possible manufactured audio tapes, suppressed exculpatory evidence, and with only hearsay testimony he must have been guilty of the crimes in the minds of his trial jury. Perhaps if Evans had those test to prove that they are fake or if his defense had that police affidavit, maybe they wouldn’t have found him guilty. Case closed is what the state wants you to believe. They want you to believe that despite never having any criminal history of violence, that Evans retaliated against Pearson for robbing him, and subsequently shot and killed him, and discarded his body in the woods up north in Godfrey Illinois. That’s what the state of Illinois wants you to believe, because in Madison County, which is just a stone’s throw away from the famed Dred Scott case, the life of a black man means nothing, and finding the actual person who killed a black youth is even more insignificant. Rather, its even perceived as a bonus when a black man is killed by another black man. Hell, who even cares if the right person is captured. That’s two for the price of one any way yo look at it.
That’s just all of my rhetoric though, what do I know? I’m just a writer who has been scouring through court records, interviewing people in Alton, and reading affidavits surrounding a bogus murder charge that has some very funky moving parts. The fact that the state has shown a deliberate unwillingness to follow court orders to turn over those original trial tapes, indicates very plainly, that they have no intention on doing so. Why? If the tapes are legitimate and the state believes in their case, that James Evans killed Nekemar Pearson which resulted in his conviction, then:
“Allow my claims to be adjudicated and provide the audio tapes so they can be forensically tested.” — James Evans
What does the Madison County Illinois prosecutor’s office have to hide?
To Be Continued…
I’m Crime Blogger David Adams
When young Nekemar Pearson went missing in the town of Alton Illinois back in 1995, he was on court ordered home supervision while awaiting prosecution on criminal charges for murder. The youth was alleged to have killed Willie Nichols. One night when Pearson didn’t return home at the time he was ordered to, his mother filed a missing person report with Alton Police, but on the exact day he was alleged to have gone missing, there were eyewitness accounts that the youth had reportedly been seen running from Nichols’ family members, who pursued him, and were shooting at him as he fled. The police and the prosecutors office knew about this information, but never pursued this aspect of the case. It was even rumored that Pearson was hiding out to avoid becoming a casualty of a retaliatory murder.
There are still to this day a volume of theories about who may have killed Pearson, but back then, the police made a man named James Evans the primary suspect in the Pearson murder case, and subsequently set a series of criminal acts in motion to obtain an indictment and conviction of Evans, which resulted in him being sent to prison for over a century. The motive used by the state was that Evans killed Pearson in retaliation for a home invasion that Pearson and accomplices allegedly kidnapped Evans, beat him, robbed him of his vehicle, and stole expensive speakers from Evans’ truck and sold them within the community.
Rumors around Alton during that time depicted Evans as a drug dealer who had money, prompting the Pearson youth and others to invade Evans’ home in a robbery that only landed the brazing bandits a net of $35 dollars and the money they received from the sale of his car speakers. While Evans remained clueless regarding the identity of the masked men who had robbed him, he would eventually learn that it was Pearson who had sold his speakers. So, when the Pearson youth went missing, some say one of Pearson’s accomplice and Alton cop Bradley Wells concocted, and spent the theory around Alton that Evans must have retaliated against him for the home invasion robbery.
Strangely though, Alton police (Bradley Wells) obtained the details regarding the robbery from one of Pearson’s accomplices, who not only admitted his involvement along with Pearson, but was even allowed to go home the same day without any criminal charges being filed against him. That aspect of the case has raised eyebrows and sparked suspicion within the community for years, based on what people have conveyed to TPC. Its an unlikely outcome for anyone who admits to police such a violent crime and then is allowed to roam free. The wide speculation regarding how the story that Evans killed Pearson was created, may have been the result of a deal brokered by dirty cops and a violent felon, who conveniently got out of a robbery and abduction beef for essentially playing ball with Wells and the prosecutors office to help frame Evans for the Pearson killing.
With the information implicating Pearson and others in the robbery and abduction of Evans, Alton police, allegedly spearheaded by Bradley Wells, set out to develop a complete fabricated conspiracy of how and why Evans murdered Nekemar Pearson, while the fact that the youth had been pursued after in a violent manner by members of Willie Nichols family, was an extremely pervasive piece of discovery in the case and an incident that just so happened to have occurred on the same day he went missing, and also just happened to be on the one year anniversary of Willie Nichols’ killing that had allegedly been committed by Pearson. Its simply incredulous that this information never made it into the Evans case during the trial.
None of these facts mattered to Alton police, but you would have to understand the culture of policing in the town during that time to fully grasp how Evans’ story became an American Tragedy. Evans’ fate appeared to be sealed when he caught the eer of Bradley Wells, who suspected that Evans was a lowlife neighborhood drug dealer (an allegation, despite testimony from state witnesses who say he was, Evans has never been proven to be a drug dealer) that Wells had a hard on for. People in Alton who have been in Wells’ office back during the 1990’s, say that Wells had two photos on his desk. One of his family and one of Evans.
I’m told that Wells fostered a hatred for Evans that ran so deep, that nearly everyone who got into trouble back then were offered plea deals, money, and even had charges dropped against them in exchange for any dirt they could provide that would help nail Evans with criminal charges in the Pearson homicide. Also, while I have exposed details of individuals who took deals from the state testifying to fabricated accounts that were manufactured and fed to them by the prosecutor’s office, I won’t go in depth by identifying them in this article, to avoid showing Mr. Evans’ hand with his case now being appealed before courts.
However, I will say this. Rarely has there ever been a capitol murder case that resulted in the conviction of a defendant, when there was absolutely no evidence whatsoever connecting the defendant to the crime. The state marched witness after witness into the courtroom and one after the other, they were all dressed in jail or prison garb, and had some sort of plea deal on the table with the state in exchange for their false testimony against Evans in the Pearson murder case. All along while the state knew that Pearson hadn’t been killed on the day they told the Evans trial jury he was. In fact, the state had an affidavit from an Alton School Police Resource officer (Cooley) who had arrested Pearson in the past, indicating that he saw Pearson and another youth walking down the street 10 days after the day the state told the jury that Evans had killed the youth.
The suppression of this highly exculpatory evidence is discovery that was never disclosed to Evans’ defense, and its doubtful that a jury would have found him guilty of murder when the alleged victim was reportedly still alive over a week after the day prosecutors were claiming he was killed. Also, these details were not known by Mr. Evans until years after he had been convicted and was serving a 107 years sentence.
Then there is the issue with the audio tapes the state played for the jury that they say is Evans conspiring to kill his alleged co-conspirators in the Pearson murder. Evans has always contended that the audios were tapes of multiple conversations edited to appear as one. Which is why Evans has for years been seeking to obtain originals of the audios for forensic testing purposes to determine their authenticity. However, for some reason the audios played for the jury during Evans’ trial is an achilles heel for the state prosecutor’s office in Madison County Illinois, who despite several court orders for them to turn over trial audios to the Evans defense, has failed to do so.
The arguments are simple in this case and should have been a rudimentary aspect of post conviction, which is the appellate process in which every convicted criminal has a constitutional right. Despite the fact that Evans was convicted and committed to a state correctional facility to serve out his term, he still has rights under state and federal law. He has been denied many of these rights though. The state of Illinois has long established that post conviction proceedings should take no more than a little over a year to complete. Mr. Evans has been incarcerated for nearly 22 years and his appeal has been available for adjudication since 2001. His case has such an inordinate delay, that its entirely suspicious in terms of how the judge has allowed this process to linger for so long, especially considering such blatant defiance of the court by the Madison County prosecutor’s office by not releasing discovery.
Its highly unlikely that the original trial judge who is also seated over Evans’ post conviction proceedings, would rule adversely against a trial and conviction that he adjudicated. So what exactly is the delay here, and why hasn’t the court under this judge sanctioned prosecutors or held them in contempt for their failure to comply with a volume of court orders directing them to turn over discovery? We must be mindful that without out Evans’ claims being properly adjudicated, he can’t move forward through the appellate process and pray before a higher court. Without those audio tapes that are a very crucial element of his appeal, he is stuck in a holding pattern and can’t move forward. Where are those audios that were played during his original trial? That’s the million dollar question. They are either legitimate recordings or like Evans has claimed, there is some funny business going on.
Therefore, in the minds of the all white trial jury that found Evans guilty without a shred of physical evidence, with possible manufactured audio tapes, suppressed exculpatory evidence, and with only hearsay testimony he must have been guilty of the crimes in the minds of his trial jury. Perhaps if Evans had those test to prove that they are fake or if his defense had that police affidavit, maybe they wouldn’t have found him guilty. Case closed is what the state wants you to believe. They want you to believe that despite never having any criminal history of violence, that Evans retaliated against Pearson for robbing him, and subsequently shot and killed him, and discarded his body in the woods up north in Godfrey Illinois. That’s what the state of Illinois wants you to believe, because in Madison County, which is just a stone’s throw away from the famed Dred Scott case, the life of a black man means nothing, and finding the actual person who killed a black youth is even more insignificant. Rather, its even perceived as a bonus when a black man is killed by another black man. Hell, who even cares if the right person is captured. That’s two for the price of one any way yo look at it.
That’s just all of my rhetoric though, what do I know? I’m just a writer who has been scouring through court records, interviewing people in Alton, and reading affidavits surrounding a bogus murder charge that has some very funky moving parts. The fact that the state has shown a deliberate unwillingness to follow court orders to turn over those original trial tapes, indicates very plainly, that they have no intention on doing so. Why? If the tapes are legitimate and the state believes in their case, that James Evans killed Nekemar Pearson which resulted in his conviction, then:
“Allow my claims to be adjudicated and provide the audio tapes so they can be forensically tested.” — James Evans
What does the Madison County Illinois prosecutor’s office have to hide?
To Be Continued…
I’m Crime Blogger David Adams
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