Federal Appeals Court Grants New Trial to Arizona Death-Row Prisoner Who May Not Have Committed Murder

A fed­er­al appeals court has reversed the con­vic­tion of Arizona death-row pris­on­er Barry Jones (pic­tured) based on med­ical evi­dence sug­gest­ing that he may not have com­mit­ted the mur­der for which he was sen­tenced to death.

On November 29, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit threw out Jones’ con­vic­tions for child abuse, sex­u­al assault, and felony mur­der of his girlfriend’s four-year-old daugh­ter amid doubts about the prosecution’s claims that Jones had bat­tered and sex­u­al­ly abused the girl and then caused her death by fail­ing to obtain nec­es­sary med­ical care. Writing for a unan­i­mous three-judge pan­el, Circuit Judge Richard R. Clifton said that Jones’ lawyers unrea­son­ably failed to inves­ti­gate and present med­ical evi­dence that the injuries that ulti­mate­ly killed Rachel Gray in May 1994 could not have been sus­tained dur­ing the time peri­od in which pros­e­cu­tors said Jones had been alone with the girl. 

Clifton, an appointee of for­mer President George W. Bush, said that “[t]he evi­dence pre­sent­ed [dur­ing fed­er­al dis­trict court] hear­ings under­mines con­sid­er­ably the con­fi­dence in the out­come of the tri­al court proceedings.”

Prosecutors claimed at tri­al that Jones had sex­u­al­ly assault­ed and phys­i­cal­ly abused Rachel, includ­ing strik­ing her in the abdomen and in the head with a pry bar that was found in his van. One day after the alleged assault, Rachel became unre­spon­sive and Jones and his girl­friend took her to a local Pima County hos­pi­tal, where she sub­se­quent­ly died. A med­ical exam­i­na­tion attrib­uted her death to com­pli­ca­tions from ​“a small bow­el lac­er­a­tion due to blunt abdom­i­nal trau­ma.” Rachel also had bruis­es, a scalp lac­er­a­tion, and oth­er injuries that the doc­tors attrib­uted to sex­u­al abuse. The pros­e­cu­tion argued to the jury that Rachel had sus­tained the injuries the day before her death, dur­ing a peri­od of time she had spent alone with Jones. 

Jones argued in fed­er­al court that his tri­al lawyers had been inef­fec­tive in fail­ing to prop­er­ly inves­ti­gate the cir­cum­stances of Rachel’s death. The fed­er­al dis­trict court con­duct­ed a sev­en-day evi­den­tiary hear­ing in which Jones pre­sent­ed expert med­ical tes­ti­mo­ny that Rachel sus­tained the injuries that killed her at least two days before her death. The expert wit­ness­es fur­ther tes­ti­fied that the state’s tes­ti­mo­ny con­cern­ing the tim­ing of her injuries was false, that her abdom­i­nal and scalp injuries could not have been caused by the pry bar, and that coun­sel would have learned these facts had they ade­quate­ly inves­ti­gat­ed the case. Jones’ tri­al attor­neys tes­ti­fied that they ​“dropped the ball and didn’t fol­low up prop­er­ly” on the evi­dence already avail­able to them. After hear­ing the evi­dence, the dis­trict court ruled in 2018 that Jones had been pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion at tri­al and in state post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings and grant­ed him a new trial.

On appeal, the cir­cuit pan­el agreed that Jones’ lawyers’ fail­ure to prop­er­ly inves­ti­gate the med­ical time­line was inef­fec­tive. While the expert tes­ti­mo­ny pre­sent­ed in the fed­er­al hear­ing ​“would not nec­es­sar­i­ly exon­er­ate Jones,” Judge Clifton wrote, ​“there is a rea­son­able prob­a­bil­i­ty that the jury might have arrived at a dif­fer­ent con­clu­sion on the ques­tion of whether Jones had inflict­ed the injuries or know­ing­ly failed to seek care.” The appeals court upheld the dis­trict court rul­ing over­turn­ing Jones’ con­vic­tions and ordered him released or retried on the mur­der, assault, and abuse charges. It also gave pros­e­cu­tors the option of retry­ing Jones on a charge of delib­er­ate­ly fail­ing to seek med­ical care for Rachel or resen­tenc­ing him on a less­er charge of reck­less fail­ure to seek treatment.

Jones was sen­tenced to death under a judge-only sen­tenc­ing process that the U.S. Supreme Court declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in 2002. However, because his first appeal had been com­plet­ed before then, the courts refused to apply that deci­sion to his case. Prosecutors attempt­ed to deny Jones fed­er­al court review of his inef­fec­tive­ness claim, argu­ing that the issue had been waived because his state-appoint­ed post-con­vic­tion lawyer had not raised it first in state court. However, Jones’ new fed­er­al lawyers suc­cess­ful­ly argued that a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion in anoth­er Arizona death penal­ty case, Martinez v. Ryan, per­mit­ted the fed­er­al court to hear his claim if his fail­ure to raise it ear­li­er was attrib­ut­able to inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion dur­ing his state court appeals.

State pros­e­cu­tors told reporters that they will seek rehear­ing of the case by the full appeals court and, if they are unsuc­cess­ful, they will ask the United States Supreme Court to review the appeals court’s decision.