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Thread: Barry Lee Jones - Arizona

  1. #11
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    SCOTUS ruled in favor of Arizona and overruled both lower courts on their grants.

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinion...-1009_19m2.pdf
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  2. #12
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS NINTH CIRCUIT RULINGS IN TWO MURDER CASES

    In a 6-3 decision announced today, the U. S. Supreme Court overturned Ninth Circuit rulings in two murder cases. The lower court rulings had announced new delays in the death sentence of an Arizona double murderer and had overturned the conviction of a man found guilty of killing a 4-year-old girl. At issue in Shinn v. David Ramirez & Barry Jones is whether the attorneys for the murderers can introduce new evidence on federal habeas corpus that they failed to present during years of state court review, which is prohibited under federal law.

    The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation joined these cases to encourage a decision to overturn the Ninth Circuit’s rulings, arguing that the lower court had misinterpreted federal law and Supreme Court precedent.

    The high court’s majority opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas noted that Congress had prohibited new hearings in federal court in these circumstances, with only narrow exceptions, and the courts had no authority to create their own exceptions. The defendants’ proposed exception “lacks any principled limit.” In addition, Justice Thomas wrote, “Serial relitigation of final convictions undermines the finality that ‘is essential to both the retributive and deterrent functions of criminal law.’ ”

    A jury convicted David Ramirez, a parolee with two violent prior felonies, on strong evidence of the 1989 stabbing murder of his girlfriend and her 15-year-old daughter. On the day of the murders, police were summoned to the victims’ apartment by neighbors who heard screaming. Ramirez was found covered in blood inside the apartment alone with the victims’ bodies. Both died of multiple stab wounds, and the girl was found nude. Ramirez later admitted having sex with the young girl on the night of the murders as well as on four prior occasions. At trial, Ramirez did not deny his guilt, but claimed that his difficult childhood and mental disabilities disqualified him from a death sentence. The judge disagreed and, based upon the aggravating circumstances, sentenced him to death. After several years of review on appeal and state habeas corpus, Ramirez claimed for the first time on federal habeas corpus that his trial attorney was incompetent because he failed to introduce evidence of his “mental retardation, brain damage, impaired intellectual functioning, childhood poverty, childhood neglect and abuse, in utero exposure to pesticides and alcohol, and the fact that he was the product of the rape of his 15-year-old mother by his uncle. He also contends that [his attorney failed] to provide [appointed expert] Dr. McMahon with additional information concerning Ramirez’s low IQ scores and poor grades.”

    Barry Jones was convicted of the 1994 sexual assault and murder of his girlfriend’s 4-year-old daughter. Neighbors testified to seeing Jones hit the child the day before she died. Friends testified that while visiting Jones that evening they saw the little girl lying on a couch bleeding and crying in pain. Jones lied, saying that a paramedic had examined her. Early the next morning, after the little girl died, Jones dropped her and her mother off at a hospital and drove away. The Pima County medical examiner determined that the child died from an infection caused by blunt force trauma to the abdomen and that she had also been sexually assaulted. For these crimes, Jones received a death sentence. After his conviction and sentence were upheld by Arizona courts on direct review and state habeas corpus, Jones claimed for the first time on federal habeas corpus that his trial attorney had been incompetent for failing to sufficiently challenge the medical evidence by introducing experts questioning the timeline for the child’s injuries. The claim does not challenge the evidence that Jones failed to take the badly injured girl for medical attention and falsely told concerned people that she had already been seen by paramedics.

    In Ramirez’s case, the federal district court denied the murderer’s claims, finding that based upon the trial record, the defense attorney was not incompetent. In Jones’s case, the district court initially denied the claims but granted them after the Ninth Circuit sent the case back. The Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of both murderers on appeal, announcing that the U. S. Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in Martinez v. Ryan allowed the new evidence.

    When the U. S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Arizona’s appeal, the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation agreed to join the case. In a scholarly amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief, CJLF Legal Director Kent Scheidegger argued that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 clearly restricts the introduction of new claims and evidence that could have been presented during the state court review of the convictions and sentences. To the extent that the Martinez decision might be interpreted to conflict with that restriction, the federal statute prevails.

    “Both murderers had the opportunity to make their cases in state court,” said Scheidegger. “In 1996, Congress cracked down on the misuse of habeas corpus to second-guess judgments that have already been fully and fairly decided in state courts. Today’s decision affirms that federal courts cannot make up their own exceptions to evade that law,” he added.

    https://cjlf.org/releases/22-07.htm

  3. #13
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    Is he guilt or innocent?

  4. #14
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Reading his case I’d say he’s guilty
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  5. #15
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Arizona death row inmate released after 29 years behind bars

    By JACQUES BILLEAUD
    The Associated Press

    An Arizona death row inmate whose convictions and death sentence in the 1994 death of a 4-year-old were thrown out was released from prison Thursday.

    Barry Lee Jones had spent 29 years behind bars for murder, child abuse and sexual assault convictions in the death of his girlfriend’s daughter. A Pima County judge ordered the release of Jones after approving a deal between his defense team and prosecutors, who said a medical re-examination of the case didn’t support a finding that Jones caused the girl’s injury. Jones pleaded guilty to a lesser murder charge.

    In early May 1994, Jones drove the child and her mother to a Tucson hospital, where the child was pronounced dead upon arrival. Her death was determined to have been caused by a small bowel laceration due to “blunt abdominal trauma.”

    Authorities had previously alleged that Jones had beaten and sexually assaulted the girl.

    The Arizona Attorney General’s Office, which agreed that Jones’ first-degree murder conviction should be thrown out, said the evidence still supported a second-degree murder conviction because Jones, who was caring for the child at the time, had allowed her to die as a result of her injuries.

    A federal judge called for Jones' release in a July 2018 ruling, concluding Jones’ earlier lawyer had failed to adequately investigate whether the girl’s injuries were suffered during the time she was alone with Jones.

    Experts had testified that the child may have been injured earlier. The judge’s ruling was upheld by an appeals court, though Jones remained in prison.

    But the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision a year ago, with Justice Clarence Thomas saying the federal courts are generally barred from taking in new evidence of ineffective assistance of counsel that could help prisoners.

    With Jones still behind bars, his attorneys struck a deal with prosecutors for his release.

    Under the agreement, once his convictions and death sentence were thrown out, Jones pleaded guilty to a second-degree murder charge in connection with his failure to seek medical care for the girl. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and will be given credit for time served.

    “Mr. Jones spent nearly three decades on Arizona’s death row despite compelling evidence that he was innocent of charges that he had fatally assaulted" the girl, said Cary Sandman, Jones’s attorney, who said his client didn’t sexually assault the child.

    Now that Jones' death sentence has been thrown out, Arizona has 110 people people on its death row.

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/...ears-100129371
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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