NEWS (8/​12/​21) — California: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has reversed a rul­ing by a California fed­er­al dis­trict court that had grant­ed a new tri­al to death-row pris­on­er Ernest Jones.

The dis­trict court had over­turned Jones’s 1995 con­vic­tion for the mur­der of his girlfriend’s moth­er, find­ing that the tri­al court had vio­lat­ed his right to present a com­plete defense by refus­ing to allow him to per­son­al­ly tes­ti­fy about his his­to­ry of trau­ma and pri­or men­tal health symp­toms that includ­ed hear­ing voic­es, black­ing out, and expe­ri­enc­ing flash­backs with­out also pre­sent­ing expert men­tal health tes­ti­mo­ny as to why that evi­dence was rel­e­vant to his men­tal state dur­ing the mur­der. The cir­cuit pan­el held that Jones’s right to present a com­plete defense was not vio­lat­ed because the con­di­tion the tri­al court put on his tes­ti­mo­ny was ​“nei­ther arbi­trary nor dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the pur­pose that it served.”

Because the dis­trict court had grant­ed a new tri­al on this claim, it had not reached oth­er issues pre­sent­ed in Jones’s habeas cor­pus peti­tion. The cir­cuit court returned Jones’s case to the dis­trict court to resolve those issues.