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Thread: Elwood Hubert Jones - Ohio

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    Elwood Hubert Jones - Ohio




    Facts of the Crime:

    On September 3, 1994, Jones murdered 67-year-old Rhoda Nathan in the Embassy Suites Hotel in Blue Ash. Jones was an employee at the hotel and Ms. Nathan was a guest. Jones entered Ms. Nathan's hotel room with the master key. He beat her over the head and stole her money and a pendant necklace.

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On March 25, 2010, Jones filed an appeal in the US Court of Appeals for Sixth Circuit over the denial of his habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/cir...s/ca6/10-3339/

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    In today's Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals opinions, the court AFFIRMED the district court's dismissal of Jones' habeas corpus petition.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    In today's United States Supreme Court orders, Jones' petition for writ of certiorari was DENIED.

    Ruling could result in an execution date.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    On May 27, 2014, Jones filed a successive habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/ohi...cv00440/171756

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    On March 27, 2015, Jones filed an appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/cir...ts/ca6/15-3316

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    Today, the Ohio Supreme Court set a January 09, 2019 execution date for Elwood Jones.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    Jones' execution date has been changed to April 21, 2021.

    http://www.drc.ohio.gov/execution-schedule

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    Prosecutors say he's a killer. His lawyers say he was framed

    When it comes to Elwood Jones’ 1997 murder conviction, his lawyer can explain away a lot of the evidence that prosecutors presented against her client.

    But not the necklace.

    Inside of Jones’ work toolbox, police say they found a unique pendant that 67-year-old Rhoda Nathan was often seen wearing. To prosecutors, it was the equivalent of a smoking gun and helped seal his fate in the 1994 slaying at a Blue Ash hotel.

    His lawyer, Erin Barnhart, agrees it’s a crucial clue, but for another reason entirely:

    “Elwood doesn’t have any other explanation for having that pendant,” Barnhart said in a recent interview. “It comes down to, if Elwood was innocent, then that pendant was planted. And that’s not something you relish as an attorney.”

    It’s something she thinks she can prove, however, if given the chance. Barnhart is fighting to get Jones – a man on death row – a new trial in the case. And, she said, she might know who the real killer is.

    Jones, now 67, was convicted three years after Nathan’s Sept. 3, 1994, murder. His execution is scheduled for April 2021. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters, who has repeatedly delayed the execution date as defense lawyers fight for Jones’ freedom, did not return a phone call seeking comment. The two original investigators – one with the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office, the other with the Blue Ash Police Department – have since died.

    Barnhart filed a motion in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court for a new trial in March. Prosecutors’ response is expected in early June, after which the defense can reply. Judge Ethna Cooper could rule by year’s end.

    Jones had worked at the Embassy Suites in Blue Ash when Nathan, a hotel guest from New Jersey, was viciously beaten to death in her hotel room. She’d been pummeled so hard in the face that she lost two teeth.

    Jones – who had previous felonies on his record for burglary and aggravated robbery – rose to suspicion a few days later, when he was treated for a cut on his hand that got severely infected. Doctors determined Jones’ cut was riddled with a bacteria called eikenella corrodens, which is primarily, but not exclusively, from people’s mouths.

    A doctor testified in Jones’ trial that the injury was likely a “fight bite” – an infection that comes from hitting another person in the mouth, which can spread dangerous bacteria and cause sometimes life-threatening complications.

    But Jones said the injury came from an equally dirty place – a trash bag full of half-eaten food and broken glass. He said he fell outside of the hotel while carrying the trash to the Dumpster, cutting his hand. He said he reopened the wound breaking down a dance floor soon after, and the infection got so bad that he was hospitalized for four days.

    Investigators formed a theory. They said Jones had spotted Nathan’s two roommates head off to breakfast around 7:30 a.m., entered the room intending to rob it and was surprised to find Nathan there. He beat her, snatched the necklace from her neck, then fled and cleaned up before being spotted back on the job at 8 a.m.

    It was then that Nathan’s friends – an elderly couple also from New Jersey – returned to their room and found her lifeless on the floor.

    The initial investigation was inarguably sloppy. Despite severe bruising and bleeding, authorities assumed at first that Nathan had died of a heart attack and didn’t collect evidence. Hours later, the coroner ruled the death a homicide, prompting police to circle back and check the room. They found nothing of note. Even an assistant prosecutor said during Jones’ trial: “There were so many people through there, the crime scene looks like a college dorm room.”

    Jones’ car – in which Nathan’s necklace was eventually found – wasn’t secured, either. Police took his car keys from him and left them on an officer’s desk for days before they searched the trunk, in which Jones kept his toolbox.

    After learning of Jones’ hand injury and finding the pendant in his car, prosecutors didn’t charge him with Nathan’s death, but they didn’t make their suspicions secret. Jones said they harassed him for a full year by keeping him under surveillance and getting him fired from a new job.

    Nathan’s knocked-out teeth were sent for DNA testing but didn’t implicate Jones. The police chief at the time told The Enquirer: “We identified the person who did it” and lamented that the testing failed to “identify our suspect.”

    In September 1995, investigators finally got the indictment they wanted after they said photographs of bruising on Nathan’s body lined up with the butt of the walkie-talkies hotel employees used to communicate with each other. Barnhart said the photographs were taken without scale, making them unreliable for comparison, but even if a walkie-talkie did cause the bruising, it might not have been Jones’.

    “They never even established that Elwood had a walkie-talkie that day,” Barnhart said.

    No direct evidence linked Jones to the crime, and he wasn’t the only hotel employee with a criminal past – one housekeeper had even been arrested on the job a year prior. The hotel had been battling a rash of room robberies, during about half of which Jones wasn’t working. Similar robberies continued after Jones’ arrest.

    Police didn’t interview many of the hotel guests in person. Rather, they mailed questionnaires a month after the slaying asking guests if they’d seen anything unusual. Several said that someone claiming to be housekeeping tried to enter their locked rooms in the hours before Nathan was killed.

    During some of those incidents, Jones wasn’t yet working.

    If not Jones, who?

    Barnhart said she believes police forced the evidence they found to implicate Jones rather than use the evidence to find the true culprit. If they had, she said that evidence might have pointed to a man named Earl Reed.

    Reed, who has since died, was a felon who lived within walking distance of the hotel and reportedly had friends on the Blue Ash Police force. His wife had been held in the county jail in 1995, during which time she told a fellow inmate that her husband had murdered a woman at a hotel and framed a black man for the crime.

    Barnhart said that cellmate told police about the hearsay confession back in ’95 but police neither investigated it nor told Jones or his lawyers about it. Jones only learned of the information in 2016, when the cellmate’s daughter sent him a message through the prison email system.

    Jones’ lawyers have been working for three years to substantiate the story, but Barnhart says the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office continues to “falsely deny the existence of records” that could substantiate the cellmate’s story. Some of those records Jones’ lawyers have found through third parties.

    Those continued roadblocks are what, to Barnhart, make that necklace pendant found in Jones’ toolbox so concerning.

    There’s little question the pendant came from Nathan’s neck. Its unique geometric design features horizontal staggered bars set atop each other. It’s largely made of gold, while the middle bar is adorned with a few tiny diamonds.

    It’s a tough piece of evidence to dismiss, Barnhart says, one that Jones has long said was planted. The more work she’s done on the case, the more she says that theory seems plausible.

    “I get to argue that the police framed my client,” she said. “That’s tough. How do you prove that?”

    She’s hoping former employees and guests might be able to help. To that end, Barnhart has launched a tip line at 614-469-4150. She asks that anyone with any information about Nathan’s death call. She also hopes to hear from people who remember Earl Reed – a tall, lanky truck driver with red hair who might have hung out at the hotel bar.

    “We think Elwood was prejudiced, he deserves a new trial,” Barnhart said. “But it would be great if we could get someone else to come forward.”

    https://eu.cincinnati.com/story/accu...al/1111699001/
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

  10. #10
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    Ohio death row inmate granted hearing to consider new trial in 1994 slaying

    Death row inmate Elwood Jones has been granted something unusual in criminal court: the chance to argue for a new trial.

    Jones, now 67, was convicted in the September 1994 beating death of Rhoda Nathan, a guest at the Embassy Suites in Blue Ash, where Jones had worked. His execution is scheduled for April 2021.

    Jones has long maintained his innocence but, so far, he could only get defense lawyers to hear him out, not judges.

    That changed Nov. 19 when Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Ethna Cooper opted not to dismiss Jones' motion for a new trial, which is typically what happens when such a request is made. Instead, she agreed to choose a date Dec. 10 for the hearing, which likely will come early next year.

    Jones' motion accuses Blue Ash police of suppressing evidence in the case, warranting a new trial. In fall 1995, about a year after 67-year-old Nathan was bludgeoned to death, a man allegedly confessed to his wife that he'd killed the woman and framed a black man for the crime. The wife, a prisoner in the county jail, told a cellmate, who in turn called police to report the round-robin confession.

    Hamilton County prosecutors argue that the evidence shouldn't be weighed because it's "triple, if not quadruple, hearsay."

    "No court should grant a new trial in a capital case based upon uncorroborated triple hearsay," Assistant Prosecutor Philip Cummings wrote in his reply to Jones' motion. Cummings also called the motion "weak" and "meritless."

    Jones' lawyers say hearsay exceptions should apply. The alleged confessor was still alive in 1995 and could have been interviewed, but because police didn't share the information with Jones' lawyers, no one knew to contact him. The man died in 2011. His wife died in 2002.

    Jones only learned of the statement in 2016. The cellmate whom his wife allegedly told about the murder is still alive and willing to testify, said Erin Barnhart, Jones' lawyer.

    Retired Hamilton County Detective Pete Alderucci, one of the initial investigators in the case, told The Enquirer in a recent interview that he still believes Jones is guilty. He points to two pieces of evidence:

    1. Jones suffered a cut on his hand that a doctor testified was likely a "fight bite" – an infection that comes from hitting another person in the mouth. Nathan had been pummeled so hard in the face that she lost two teeth.
    2. Police said they found a necklace belonging to Nathan in a work toolbox in Jones' car.
    3. Jones has long argued that he was framed by overzealous officers who, he alleges, planted the pendant in his car.

    Statistically, Jones' efforts to appeal aren't likely to succeed. Data from the Federal Judiciary indicate that the U.S. Court of Appeals reverses about 6% of criminal convictions.

    Jones had worked at the hotel where Nathan, of New Jersey, was sharing a room with friends. She'd been left alone to shower. When her friends returned, they found her on the floor.

    Assistant Prosecutor Mark Piepmeier, who'd handled the initial case against Jones, said in a June interview that the crime scene posed some challenges because hotel rooms inherently have a lot of trace evidence – DNA and fingerprints, for example.

    "The conclusive piece of evidence was this pendant," he said. "We thought it might have just been costume jewelry, then we find out from her family that her husband had had that custom-made for her. So it was a one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry that's in his toolbox."

    Jones' case was featured on an episode of the TV show "Forensic Files" in 2001. The episode, called "Punch Line," focused on the presence of a specific type of bacteria in Jones' hand injury to secure his conviction.

    https://eu.cincinnati.com/story/news...al/4253294002/
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

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