James Martin, a 63-year-old Black man, became the victim in a Philadelphia homicide that court records later described as a brutal beating death. Known in the case record as James “Poke” Martin, he encountered Kimerly Joynes and her male companion, Robert Snead, after the pair allegedly took offense at remarks Martin had made to Joynes. What began as a confrontation turned violent when Joynes and Snead faced Martin, and Snead beat him until he was unconscious.
The violence did not
end when Martin was down. According to the court’s summary of the evidence, Joynes then stabbed Martin several times with a carving fork at or near the time of death. The medical testimony described those stab wounds as not being the cause of death, but the scene still showed the level of violence that surrounded Martin’s final moments. Afterward, Joynes helped Snead wrap Martin’s body into a bundle and tried to clean away blood and other evidence from the room where the attack had taken place.
Martin’s body was later dumped in a marshy area, where police eventually discovered him. The case moved from the hidden aftermath of the killing into the courtroom, where the actions taken after the beating became important evidence: the wrapping of the body, the attempted cleanup, and the disposal of Martin’s remains all pointed to an effort to conceal what had happened.
Kimerly Joynes was arrested and prosecuted in connection with Martin’s death. On July 24, 1980, a jury convicted her of first-degree murder and criminal conspiracy. The trial court sentenced her to life imprisonment. Her conviction was upheld on appeal, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied further review in 1983.
Joynes continued to challenge the conviction over the years. She filed post-conviction petitions, including a later petition in 2016, but the courts rejected her claims. In 2018, the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed the denial of her serial PCRA petition, leaving the conviction and life sentence intact.
Robert Snead was identified in the court record as Joynes’ male companion and the person who beat Martin into unconsciousness. The available online court summaries describe Snead as directly involved in the fatal confrontation and Joynes as assisting before and after Martin’s death. The sources reviewed did not provide a full separate charging or sentencing history for Snead, but they consistently name him as the companion involved in the beating that led to Martin’s death.
