A Geneva man whose murder conviction was overturned in August by an appellate court will appear before the Illinois Supreme Court for a final decision.

Shadwick King

According to court documents and a Chicago Tribune story reposted on the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office Facebook page, the Supreme Court will hear an appeal by Kane County prosecutors in the case of Shadwick King, the man convicted in 2015 by a Kane County court of killing his wife after he learned that she had become emotionally involved with another man.

King, of the 800 block of Oak Street, Geneva, was convicted in 2015 by a Kane County jury of first-degree murder in the death of his wife, 32-year-old Kathleen King.

At the time, prosecutors presented evidence that sometime after 5 a.m. July 6, 2014, King asphyxiated his wife after learning of her relationship with another man, then laid her body near railroad tracks in order to make it look as if the death were accidental.

(CREDIT: Google Maps)

Sometime after 6:30 a.m. that day, a Metra Rail conductor reported seeing a female body lying on the Union Pacific Railway tracks in the vicinity of the 200 block of Briar Lane and Esping Park on Geneva’s east side.

Geneva police responded to the scene at about 6:50 a.m. and determined that the woman — later identified as Kathleen King — was deceased.

“When we charged Mr. King with murder, I promised that our office would vigorously pursue justice for Kathleen and her family and friends, and the Geneva community” Kane County State’s Attorney Joe McMahon said in 2015. “Although we have done that, we cannot erase the emptiness that her friends, family, and particularly her children will continue to feel going forward. It is not lost on us that Kathleen’s children will now grow up without their parents. That is at least as great a tragedy as Kathleen’s murder.”

In August, the 2nd Appellate Court ruled that the expert testimony of Mark Safarik, an FBI profiler, went beyond his expertise and deprived King of a fair trial.

“No matter how many crime scenes he had attended as a police officer, how much study he had done on violent crime scenes as an FBI profiler, or how many courses he had attended — (Safarik) was not qualified by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education to opine on the cause and manner of Kathleen’s death,” Appellate Court Justice Kathryn Zenoff  said in a judgment of the court.

No date has yet been set for the Supreme Court appeal, according the the Tribune story. King is serving a 30-year sentence for the 2014 murder.