A 20-year old serving a 35-year prison sentence for a murder in Streator lost an appeal this week. Third District appellate justices Vicki Wright, Daniel Schmidt, and Mary McDade rejected all of the reasons Tamil Adams claimed the 2019 verdict should be thrown out. Among many things, the opinion says the prosecution proved Adams guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, Adams wasn’t given an unfairly long sentence, and his lawyer didn’t fall short of representing him well.
A jury found Adams guilty of shooting 33-year old Maria De La Torre in her driveway during a robbery attempt in 2018. Testimony at the trial was that Adams, just 16 at the time, had robbed someone at the house before and got a ride from Chicago specifically to commit another crime there.
One of the people who rode along pleaded guilty to home invasion and testified against Adams. In the appeal, Adams claimed his 35-year sentence was disproportionately long and used that codefendant’s 30-year sentence to try to make the point. The justices disagreed, finding the two defendants didn’t have equal blame for everything.
In other claims, Adams says he wasn’t fed for several hours while waiting to talk to police, he wasn’t allowed to see his parents while he was there, and police ignored his request for a lawyer. The appellate judges found that Adams didn’t ask for any food, he also didn’t ask to see his parents or other concerned adults, and he was the one who started and stopped his talk with police without a lawyer present.
One claim in the appeal came up in the weeks after Adams’s trial. A juror contacted the lawyer who represented Adams then and said he didn’t know he could persist in a verdict of not guilty. The lawyer didn’t subpoena that juror in pursuit of an overturned verdict. The appellate judges found that such a move isn’t allowed anyway.
The appellate judges found that Judge H. Chris Ryan handled the case properly. They disagreed with arguments that Ryan shouldn’t have let in evidence of previous crimes and that he should have thrown out statements Adams made to police.
Adams will be eligible for parole in 2053.