Chicago Triubune

By STEVE MILLS
Tribune Staff Writers

Last of two parts.

JACKSONVILLE — By the time Leo Jones was exe­cut­ed in Florida’s elec­tric chair in March 1998 for the sniper killing of a police offi­cer, the case that had sent him to Death Row 16 years before had slow­ly but unmis­tak­ably come apart.

The main wit­ness against him had recant­ed. Two key offi­cers in the case had left the Police Department under a cloud, and alle­ga­tions that one of them beat Jones before he sup­pos­ed­ly con­fessed had gained credence.

More than a dozen peo­ple had impli­cat­ed anoth­er man as the killer, say­ing they either saw him car­ry­ing a rifle as he ran from the crime scene or heard him brag he had shot the officer.

Even Florida Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw, a for­mer chief of the cap­i­tal crimes divi­sion of the state attor­ney’s office in Jacksonville, wrote that Jones’ case had become ​“a horse of a different color.”

Newly dis­cov­ered evi­dence, Shaw wrote, ​“casts seri­ous doubt on Jones’ guilt.” He and one oth­er judge vot­ed to grant Jones a new trial.

But a five-judge major­i­ty of the court ruled that Jones’ claims had no mer­it. One week lat­er, Jones, 47, was put to death.

In the American sys­tem of crim­i­nal jus­tice, the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence van­ish­es once a defen­dant has been found guilty, and the bur­den of proof shifts from the pros­e­cu­tion to the defense.

Although Death Row inmates are giv­en numer­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties for appeal — and some have been able to win their free­dom — it can be enor­mous­ly dif­fi­cult to per­suade appeals courts to embrace new evi­dence of innocence.

Evidence that a defen­dant could cap­i­tal­ize on at tri­al has less poten­cy on appeal. Issues of law and pro­ce­dure, rather than of inno­cence, dominate.

Those obsta­cles exist even though some con­vic­tions are built on weak foun­da­tions. A Tribune inves­ti­ga­tion of exe­cu­tions in the United States found dozens of cas­es where pros­e­cu­tors relied on dubi­ous evi­dence or lawyers failed to mount a vig­or­ous defense, under­min­ing the belief that when the state employs an irre­versible pun­ish­ment, it must do so with unshakable certainty.

More than two years after Jones was exe­cut­ed, there are lin­ger­ing doubts about his guilt, and ques­tions about whether the sys­tem of appeals in cap­i­tal cas­es ade­quate­ly address­es claims of innocence.

At the same time, a Tribune rein­ves­ti­ga­tion of Jones’ case has uncov­ered new evi­dence that cor­rob­o­rates Jones’ long­stand­ing claim that his con­fes­sion was coerced after Jacksonville police beat him.

In an inter­view with the Tribune, the lead detec­tive on the case said he saw anoth­er offi­cer attack Jones while he was in cus­tody and had to pull him off Jones. The detec­tive’s admis­sion con­tra­dicts his tes­ti­mo­ny at tri­al and in lat­er court hearings.

The assis­tant state attor­ney who pros­e­cut­ed the case said in an inter­view that he sus­pects that police, angry over the mur­der of a col­league, phys­i­cal­ly abused Jones — though he insists Jones was guilty.

“To me, the most dis­turb­ing point of the case has always been his con­fes­sion and the events lead­ing up to his con­fes­sion,” said Ralph N. Greene III, now an attor­ney in pri­vate prac­tice. ​“That series of facts always both­ered me as a prosecutor.”

Two jurors at Jones’ tri­al have told the Tribune they now have mis­giv­ings about their guilty ver­dict, say­ing that from what they now know about the case, the evi­dence they heard at Jones’ tri­al was incomplete.

“I think we reached a ver­dict that made sense based on evi­dence we heard at the time,” said Robert Manley, an adver­tis­ing copy­writer who vot­ed for a life sentence.

“But then the evi­dence changed. That changed my thinking.”

Said Nadine Appleby, a retired sec­re­tary who vot­ed for a death sen­tence: ​“If we had known some of these things that had come up after­ward, it might have made a difference.”

Heavier bur­den of proof

In the U.S. sys­tem of crim­i­nal jus­tice, appel­late courts are reluc­tant to sec­ond-guess jury ver­dicts and usu­al­ly defer to rul­ings by tri­al judges that involve issues of fact. After all, juries and tri­al judges observe the demeanor of wit­ness­es and are seen as best posi­tioned to judge their credibility.

Recantations, where wit­ness­es dis­avow ear­li­er tes­ti­mo­ny for a new ver­sion of the truth, are by law viewed skeptically.

New wit­ness­es are viewed with dis­trust if they have wait­ed years, or even decades, to come for­ward, rather than offer­ing their account imme­di­ate­ly after a crime.

Rules also have been writ­ten to bring final­i­ty to appeals — in essence, to bal­ance the demands for fair­ness with a need for effi­cien­cy. Deadlines are in place to keep the jus­tice sys­tem man­age­able and to pre­vent defen­dants from appeal­ing indef­i­nite­ly, although they also can hin­der defen­dants who make legit­i­mate, but untime­ly, claims.

These cir­cum­stances make it dif­fi­cult for a pris­on­er try­ing to prove he was wrongfully convicted.

“In a lot of ways, inno­cence is the worst pos­si­ble issue some­one on Death Row can have,” said Michael Mello, a for­mer appel­late attor­ney in Florida who now teach­es law at Vermont Law School. ​“There is such a denial that this sort of thing hap­pens to innocent people.”

Perhaps no deci­sion embod­ied that more than the U.S. Supreme Court’s rul­ing in the case of Leonel Torres Herrera, who was con­vict­ed of the 1981 mur­ders of two police offi­cers in Texas and exe­cut­ed by injec­tion in 1993.

Herrera’s lawyers claimed in fed­er­al court that they had evi­dence show­ing he was inno­cent. They argued he deserved a new tri­al because exe­cut­ing an inno­cent man vio­lat­ed the Constitution’s pro­tec­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly those against cru­el and unusual punishment.

In deny­ing Herrera’s appeal, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote that the tri­al was the ​“para­mount event” in a case and the ​“pre­sump­tion of inno­cence dis­ap­pears” once a defen­dant has been con­vict­ed in a fair trial.

In a sting­ing dis­sent, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote: ​“Just as an exe­cu­tion with­out ade­quate safe­guards is unac­cept­able, so too is an exe­cu­tion when the con­demned pris­on­er can prove that he is innocent.

“The exe­cu­tion of a per­son who can show that he is inno­cent comes per­ilous­ly close to simple murder.”

The demand for effi­cien­cy in the sys­tem can put pro­ce­dure over sub­stance as dead­lines are strictly enforced.

That is what hap­pened in Virginia to Roger Coleman.

Coleman had been con­vict­ed of a 1981 mur­der and rape, in a case in which pros­e­cu­tors relied on a jail­house infor­mant and impre­cise sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence. Coleman had an ali­bi that, if true, would not have allowed him time to com­mit the crime.

In the mid-1980s, Coleman lost a state court hear­ing, and his lawyers missed, by one day, a 30-day dead­line for fil­ing a notice of intent to appeal. Later, when they went to fed­er­al court, argu­ing Coleman deserved a hear­ing on charges that the state with­held evi­dence and that pros­e­cu­tors pre­sent­ed false tes­ti­mo­ny, they were rejected.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6 – 3 deci­sion, also turned them down, cit­ing the missed dead­line. Although Coleman had mount­ed a strong case for inno­cence, the court dis­missed his appeal on procedural grounds.

“This is a case about Federalism,” the major­i­ty said in an opin­ion writ­ten by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The court, she wrote, should respect the rules the states put in place. Less than a year lat­er, in 1992, Coleman, still pro­claim­ing his inno­cence, was executed.

In at least a half dozen cas­es, one or more judges on appeal vot­ed to halt an exe­cu­tion because of their con­cern the defen­dant might be inno­cent. Most of these objec­tions were expressed in dissenting opinions.

Earlier this year, on the eve of Freddie Lee Wright’s exe­cu­tion, two judges on the Alabama Supreme Court vig­or­ous­ly dis­sent­ed from the court’s deci­sion to allow Wright to be put to death in the state’s electric chair.

Wright, a black man con­vict­ed of killing a white cou­ple, had two tri­als. In the first, he came one vote short of win­ning his free­dom after a racial­ly mixed jury dead­locked, vot­ing 11 – 1 for acquit­tal. At the sec­ond tri­al, pros­e­cu­tors used near­ly all of their dis­cre­tionary strikes to remove blacks from the jury pool, and an all-white jury convicted Wright.

Alabama Supreme Court Justice Douglas Johnstone vot­ed to stay the exe­cu­tion, say­ing the pros­e­cu­tion did not dis­close cru­cial evi­dence impeach­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of its two key wit­ness­es. Prosecutors also did not tell Wright’s lawyers that anoth­er man ini­tial­ly had been indict­ed. But those charges were dropped despite eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, a bal­lis­tics report match­ing the man’s gun to the crime, and an incrim­i­nat­ing state­ment from his girlfriend.

In a last-ditch appeal before Wright’s exe­cu­tion on March 3, his lawyers argued that elec­tro­cu­tion was inhu­mane. In response, Johnstone wrote, ​“Whether Wright is elec­tro­cut­ed or inject­ed seems insignif­i­cant com­pared to the like­li­hood that we are send­ing an inno­cent man to his death.”

A police officer dies

Early on the morn­ing of May 23, 1981, Leo Jones and his cousin Bobby Hammonds were in their apart­ment at 6th and Davis Streets, just a block from the almost con­stant rum­ble of Interstate Highway 95 in Jacksonville.

Jones was a drug deal­er with a hand­ful of arrests and a few con­vic­tions, includ­ing one for shoot­ing a teenag­er when he was 15.

“Everybody knew that Leo sold drugs,” said Mike Chavis, who was an inves­ti­ga­tor for Jones’ appel­late lawyers. ​“He was a drug deal­er. That’s what he did.”

At 1:10 a.m., two shots rang out. One of the bul­lets, which police lat­er deter­mined was fired from a .30 – 30 rifle, crashed through the wind­shield of a police cruis­er stopped at the inter­sec­tion. The bul­let hit the wire cage that sep­a­rates the front and back seats, and a bul­let frag­ment ric­o­cheted into the head of patrol­man Thomas Szafranski, 28, killing him.

Within min­utes, Jacksonville police offi­cers were search­ing Jones’ build­ing, and when they burst into a sec­ond-floor apart­ment, they found Jones and Hammonds.

Police took both men in for ques­tion­ing and then charged Jones, who they claimed had con­fessed. Hammonds gave a state­ment, say­ing he saw Jones leave the apart­ment with a rifle and return after he heard some gunshots.

Before tri­al, Jones’ lawyers tried to get his con­fes­sion thrown out because, they alleged, it had been obtained through police coer­cion. Jones claimed that police beat him and put a gun to his head. He said he felt he had no choice but to confess.

Jones, in fact, was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal and treat­ed for minor injuries. A lawyer with the pub­lic defend­er’s office who saw Jones at a bond hear­ing short­ly after his arrest said Jones had cuts and bruis­es on his face and neck.

At a pre­tri­al hear­ing on the valid­i­ty of the con­fes­sion, Hammonds dis­avowed the state­ment he had giv­en police. He said offi­cers had beat­en and threat­ened him, telling him to implicate Jones.

Police tes­ti­fied that Jones and Hammonds were hurt dur­ing a scuf­fle as the two resist­ed arrest. Officers denied any phys­i­cal abuse or coer­cion. Detective Hugh Eason told the Tribune he sim­ply talked to Jones until he per­suad­ed him to confess.

Further, Jones’ lawyers charged that the con­fes­sion, writ­ten by Eason and signed by Jones, was sus­pect because of the vague descrip­tion of the weapon as a ​“gun or rifle.”

Eason tes­ti­fied that Jones told him what to write and that Jones then vol­un­tar­i­ly signed it.

Judge A.C. Soud denied the motion to throw out the con­fes­sion. At tri­al, Hammonds changed his sto­ry again, this time tes­ti­fy­ing against Jones. Jones main­tained his inno­cence, say­ing he was in bed when the shooting occurred.

As for the motive, pros­e­cu­tor Greene said that Jones hat­ed the police and was seek­ing revenge when he shot Szafranski. Jones had been stopped a week before the shoot­ing and, accord­ing to the police offi­cer who stopped him, threat­ened to kill an officer.

The offi­cer’s report made no men­tion of any threat, and Jones denied it.

Police found two .30 – 30 rifles in Jones’ apart­ment. They ruled out one as fir­ing the bul­let, but tests on the oth­er were inconclusive.

Although his fin­ger­prints were on one of the rifles, Jones claimed the guns belonged to Glenn Schofield, an acquain­tance he had sold cocaine to that night.

Jones, who was black, was tried and con­vict­ed by an all-white jury. Szafranski also was white.

In the jury’s eyes, there was ample proof of guilt: Hammonds’ tes­ti­mo­ny, the dis­cov­ery of the rifles and the con­fes­sion, always a pow­er­ful piece of evidence.

“The evi­dence was pret­ty con­clu­sive,” said juror Raymond Kitchens.

Jurors then vot­ed 9 – 3 to rec­om­mend that Jones be sen­tenced to death. The judge accept­ed the rec­om­men­da­tion, which did not have to be unanimous.

Innocence is not an issue

In Jones’ first round of appeals, his lawyers went right back to the alleged con­fes­sion and ques­tioned the judge’s deci­sion to let jurors hear it.

By law, the lawyers had to focus exclu­sive­ly on what hap­pened at tri­al, such as whether the judge’s rul­ings were prop­er. They could not offer any new evi­dence, and their appeals failed.

Over the next five years, as one phase of appeals end­ed and anoth­er began, Jones’ new legal team — led by for­mer pub­lic defend­er Robert Link — was able to present new evi­dence, which it was slowly discovering.

But the lawyers faced a dif­fi­cult stan­dard if they were to get a court to recon­sid­er his con­vic­tion. Florida law at the time required that a defen­dant not only raise doubts about the jury’s ver­dict, but also present evi­dence so com­pelling that a tri­al judge would find the jury’s ver­dict a mis­take and declare a defen­dant not guilty.

In time, Link and his inves­ti­ga­tors were able to locate some of the first evi­dence sug­gest­ing that Jones might be inno­cent and that anoth­er man might have been involved.

Link found wit­ness­es who said the shot that killed Szafranski came from the bush­es in a vacant lot near Jones’ build­ing, not from the build­ing itself as police tes­ti­fied and as the dis­put­ed confession stated.

None of them had been called to tes­ti­fy by Jones’ lawyer at trial.

“And there was no ques­tion these peo­ple were there,” Link said, ​“because they were list­ed on police reports. They weren’t very dif­fi­cult to locate.”

Link also began to build a case against Glenn Schofield, the man Jones said had been at the build­ing that night to buy cocaine. Schofield, inter­viewed by the Tribune in Jacksonville, denied any role in the murder.

Schofield, now 43, has a lengthy crim­i­nal his­to­ry that, accord­ing to records, has put him in prison for all but about three of the past 26 years.

In 1974, when he was 17, Schofield plead­ed guilty to manslaugh­ter. He served five years, and was released in 1979. The next year, he was charged with mur­der, but those charges were dropped.

Nine days after Szafranski was killed, accord­ing to police and court records, Schofield shot at a police offi­cer fol­low­ing a bank rob­bery. Schofield, who then escaped twice from jail, even­tu­al­ly plead­ed guilty to a weapons charge. After being paroled in 1989, Schofield was con­vict­ed of anoth­er weapons charge. He was released ear­li­er this year.

One police report shows that Schofield was ini­tial­ly list­ed as a pos­si­ble sus­pect in the Szafranski mur­der, along with Jones and Hammonds, but appar­ent­ly was dropped after Jones was charged.

Anthony Hickson, a retired Jacksonville homi­cide detec­tive who for a time was Eason’s part­ner, told the Tribune that one of his con­fi­den­tial infor­mants told him that Schofield, not Jones, had murdered Szafranski.

Hickson said that after the tri­al, he turned over this infor­ma­tion to either a lawyer or an inves­ti­ga­tor for the defense — he’s not sure which. He would not iden­ti­fy the informant.

Link began gath­er­ing evi­dence that Schofield had admit­ted to oth­ers that he killed Szafranski, and that Schofield was spot­ted at the scene of the crime just moments after it happened.

Paul Allen Marr, a prison inmate and jail­house law clerk, told Jones’ lawyers he got to know Schofield in the mid-1980s, when both were serv­ing time at Union Correctional Institution. Marr, who was con­vict­ed of sex­u­al bat­tery, said Schofield told him that he, not Jones, had killed Szafranski.

Marr, who was paroled ear­li­er this year and now works in con­struc­tion, told the Tribune: ​“The more I lis­tened, the more he talked. And before I knew it, he told me he had mur­dered that police offi­cer. … He said he had a beef against all those cops.”

Marion Manning, who was a girl­friend of Schofield’s, put him at the scene of the crime. In an affi­davit, she claimed that moments after the shoot­ing, Schofield flagged her down, jumped into her car and told her to drive away.

Link used the new evi­dence to bol­ster his claim that Jones’ tri­al lawyer had been inef­fec­tive. That attor­ney, H. Randolph Fallin, had failed to locate the wit­ness­es that Link found.

That was a tough argu­ment to win, though. Fallin, who had a good rep­u­ta­tion, tes­ti­fied he had tried to uncov­er evi­dence by going into the neigh­bor­hood where the mur­der occurred and look­ing for wit­ness­es with the aid of Jones’ family.

Even with those devel­op­ments, Link thought it was unlike­ly that Soud, who heard the evi­dence, would grant a new trial.

Soud reject­ed Jones’ appeal, and then in 1988 the Florida Supreme Court reject­ed it, say­ing the evi­dence was insufficient.

More wit­ness­es found

The state nev­er wavered in its con­vic­tion that Jones was guilty, that Schofield had noth­ing to do with the mur­der, and that Jones had received a fair trial.

Curtis French, an assis­tant attor­ney gen­er­al who han­dled sev­er­al of the appeals, said the alleged con­fes­sions from Schofield either nev­er were said or were just a mat­ter of Schofield ​“run­ning his mouth.”

“Our posi­tion on new­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence,” French said, ​“was that [Jones] did­n’t have any, or at least it wasn’t credible.”

In 1991, Jones’ lawyers returned to court with more evi­dence favor­able to Jones. This time, the lawyers pre­sent­ed anoth­er girl­friend of Schofield’s, who said that short­ly after the mur­der, he asked her to tell police if they came look­ing for him that he was with her when Szafranski was killed. She also claimed that sev­er­al years after the mur­der, he bragged about killing Szafranski.

A girl­friend of Jones’, mean­while, said that she was at the apart­ment build­ing the night Szafranski was shot and saw Schofield run­ning upstairs with a rifle. She said she asked why he was run­ning, and he replied, ​“Them crack­ers are after me.”

Two oth­er wit­ness­es said in sworn affi­davits that they were walk­ing near the apart­ment build­ing when they heard a shot and saw Schofield run­ning from the build­ing car­ry­ing a rifle. The lawyers also pre­sent­ed affi­davits from three oth­er prison inmates say­ing that Schofield had bragged that he, not Jones, had killed Szafranski.

Finally, the lawyers had a sworn affi­davit from Hammonds in which he revert­ed to his tes­ti­mo­ny that he nev­er saw Jones with a rifle.

Because Jones was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed with­in a cou­ple of weeks, Soud ordered a hear­ing on a Sunday after­noon. He denied Jones’ appeal.

His rea­sons were set out in a lengthy opin­ion in which he said the evi­dence Jones’ attor­neys offered still was not so com­pelling that, if he were to try the Jones case again, he would imme­di­ate­ly acquit him.

“It was a com­pelling case of guilt,” Soud said in an interview.

He said Schofield’s alleged state­ments to oth­er inmates were ​“less than reli­able” because no oth­er evi­dence sup­port­ed them. He also ruled that they were hearsay and that Schofield did­n’t say them imme­di­ate­ly after the mur­der, weakening them.

In fact, jail­house infor­mants often are unre­li­able. That’s because their tes­ti­mo­ny typ­i­cal­ly comes in exchange for ben­e­fits from prosecutors.

But in the Jones case, the jail­house infor­mants had lit­tle to gain by tes­ti­fy­ing. The defense could not offer a short­er sen­tence or a trans­fer to anoth­er prison — the kinds of induce­ments that pros­e­cu­tors some­times pro­vide in exchange for inmate testimony.

Soud cit­ed Jones’ alleged con­fes­sion as a key part of the pros­e­cu­tion case, and as a rea­son to find that the defense had not over­come its bur­den. He could not rec­on­cile the con­fes­sion with Jones’ claims of innocence.

When the Jones case reached the Florida Supreme Court, his lawyers won a bit­ter­sweet vic­to­ry. The court, in a rul­ing that cut new legal ground, acknowl­edged the stan­dard for new­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence had been too high and was ​“almost impos­si­ble to meet.”

It said the stan­dard ​“runs the risk of thwarting justice.…”

From then on, the court said, new­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence had to be strong enough that it would like­ly pro­duce a not guilty ver­dict at a new tri­al. It was a sub­tle but sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence, but it did not matter.

The court said some of Jones’ evi­dence was not new. Some of the wit­ness­es, the court said, were avail­able for the tri­al. Others, such as Paul Marr, were pre­sent­ed on an ear­li­er appeal and, con­se­quent­ly, did not qual­i­fy as newly discovered.

With much of the evi­dence stripped from Jones’ appeal, the court said his claim did not meet the lower standard.

In some ways, Jones suf­fered because his attor­neys and inves­ti­ga­tors devel­oped their evi­dence in a piece­meal fash­ion over years, rather than in a sin­gle burst that could have a dra­mat­ic impact on an appeals court.

“It’s incred­i­bly frus­trat­ing,” said Martin McClain, one of Jones’ lawyers. ​“We thought we were solv­ing the case. We thought we were doing all the right things.”

In their next appeal, the attor­neys offered three more wit­ness­es who placed Schofield at the scene, includ­ing one who said he saw Schofield shoot the rifle from the bush­es near Jones’ apart­ment. They also pre­sent­ed four more prison inmates to say that Schofield confessed.

But the Florida Supreme Court said this evi­dence, which the lawyers sought to use to strength­en what they pre­sent­ed before, was redun­dant or less than persuasive.

Schofield, the court said, might sim­ply have been bragging.

Evidence points to beating

Jones’ appel­late team even­tu­al­ly uncov­ered the first real evi­dence to under­cut the police offi­cers’ denials that they had phys­i­cal­ly abused Jones.

A retired police offi­cer, Cleveland Smith, came for­ward and said Officer Lynwood Mundy had bragged that he beat Jones after his arrest. Smith, who described Mundy as an ​“enforcer,” tes­ti­fied that he once watched Mundy get a con­fes­sion from a sus­pect by squeez­ing the sus­pec­t’s gen­i­tals in a vise grip. He said Mundy unabashed­ly described beating Jones.

“Every time you asked Lynwood about it, he would recount the entire sto­ry,” Smith said in an inter­view with the Tribune. ​“I must have heard that sto­ry at least 10 or 12 times.”

Smith, an offi­cer for 24 years before he retired in 1997, said he wait­ed so long to come for­ward because he want­ed to secure his pen­sion. He said the cul­ture of the Jacksonville police force was such that he feared reprisals had he come forward sooner.

Prosecutors did not chal­lenge Smith’s credibility.

Recently, Hugh Eason, who was in charge of the inves­ti­ga­tion, said in an inter­view that he had to pull Mundy off of Jones out­side Jones’ apart­ment. ​“He hit him, but he did­n’t bust him up,” Eason said. ​“But he hit him pretty good.”

Mundy, in a brief inter­view at his home, denied any misconduct.

“All I did was arrest that man. I did­n’t hurt nobody. I was just doing my job,” he said.

When Mundy left the depart­ment in 1985, it was under a cloud of suspicion.

In 1982, almost a year after Jones went on tri­al, two offi­cers tes­ti­fied in an inter­nal affairs hear­ing that Mundy brought false charges against sus­pects and some­times per­jured him­self when tes­ti­fy­ing in court hear­ings. ​“Officer Mundy,” one tes­ti­fied, ​“is just an out­right known liar.”

A 1985 inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tion into alle­ga­tions that Mundy had roughed up a sus­pect called the inci­dent ​“an embar­rass­ment” to the depart­ment. It was amid that inves­ti­ga­tion that Mundy resigned.

Eason also came under scruti­ny. In March 1987, pros­e­cu­tors launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into alle­ga­tions that Eason had a role in the mur­der of a used-car lot owner.

Prosecutors pre­sent­ed their evi­dence to a grand jury, but no charges were filed. After Eason decid­ed to retire in July, the depart­men­t’s inter­nal inquiry was closed.

Eason, who now makes his liv­ing repos­sess­ing cars, said the alle­ga­tions against him were false but declined to discuss details.

The pros­e­cu­tor also ran into trou­ble. Greene was indict­ed by a fed­er­al grand jury in 1985 on charges he con­spired with a coun­ty judge to inter­vene in a dozen cas­es involving friends.

Greene resigned dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion, and he was acquit­ted at trial.

A Supreme Court divided

On March 17, 1998, the Florida Supreme Court issued its final rul­ing on Jones’ inno­cence claims. The major­i­ty said that ​“at most,” the evi­dence sug­gest­ed Schofield might have tak­en part in the shoot­ing with Jones — a the­o­ry of the crime that pros­e­cu­tors nev­er before suggested.

Two judges, Leander Shaw and Harry Anstead, issued vig­or­ous dis­sents. Anstead even list­ed each wit­ness — 20 in all — who impli­cat­ed Schofield or tes­ti­fied to oth­er prob­lems with the case that would help prove Jones’ innocence.

Anstead called the evi­dence ​“enor­mous” and said the court was being over­ly restric­tive in how it con­sid­ered it — so much so that the court threat­ened ​“to defeat the ends of jus­tice” by its nearsightedness.

“…we can­not ignore the fact that the State rou­tine­ly relies on ​‘jail­house con­fes­sions’ to secure con­vic­tions in crim­i­nal cas­es, includ­ing many mur­der cas­es,” he wrote. ​“Obviously the State would have a pow­er­ful case against Schofield.…”

Shaw argued that appeals courts were sup­posed to be a ​“con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­ty net” to pre­vent the exe­cu­tion of innocent people.

“The present case is a clas­sic exam­ple of that safe­ty net work­ing prop­er­ly — up to the present point,” he wrote. ​“Although Jones was tried and con­vict­ed in 1981, much of the present evi­dence did not — could not — come to light until now, more than a decade lat­er — after Officer Smith and Schofield’s accusers came for­ward. This evi­dence vast­ly impli­cates Schofield and casts seri­ous doubt on Jones’ guilt.”

Thomas Crapps, an assis­tant gen­er­al coun­sel in the gov­er­nor’s office, recalled that the Jones case was dif­fi­cult to resolve for then-Gov. Lawton Chiles. The dis­sents from Shaw and Anstead weighed heav­i­ly on Chiles, who had to approve the execution.

“When you start get­ting into these cas­es, you real­ize how much things change over time and how they’re not cut and dried,” said Crapps, now in private practice.

On March 24, 1998, Jones was executed.

“What I always won­dered about was whether I failed Leo or the sys­tem failed him,” said McClain, one Jones’ appel­late attor­neys. ​“And I think that the sys­tem failed him. You’re call­ing on the sys­tem to look at itself and own up to mak­ing a mis­take. The sys­tem does­n’t like to do that.” Juror Robert Manley, who then lived in Texas, was on his way to work one morn­ing when he heard on his car radio that Jones had been executed.

He said he pulled over to the side of the road and began to recall his jury duty. He remem­bered how cer­tain he had been at tri­al, how he had been impressed by the strength of the evi­dence, how the pros­e­cu­tors had sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly erased his doubts.

Then Manley began to think how the cer­tain­ty he once felt had erod­ed over the years as he learned more and more about Jones’ case.

“It just hit me that some­thing I’d been a part of had come to fruition,” he said. ​“I felt horrible.”

Tribune staff writ­ers Maurice Possley and Ken Armstrong con­tributed to this report.