Dave Mann posts, "DNA Could Show If Claude Jones Was Wrongly Executed," at the Texas Observer.
A state district judge has ordered East Texas prosecutors to hand over key evidence from a 1989 murder case to the Innocence Project and The Texas Observer for DNA testing—analysis that may prove for the first time that Texas executed an innocent man.
The Innocence Project and the Observer filed suit in 2007 to obtain a strand of hair from the scene of a homicide 21 years ago at a liquor store in San Jacinto County. The one-inch hair was key evidence that supposedly implicated Claude Howard Jones in the killing. Jones was put to death on Dec. 7, 2000—the final execution overseen by then-Gov. George W. Bush.
On June 11, state district Judge Paul Murphy issued a one-page order, granting the Innocence Project and Observer’s motion for summary judgment in the case and commanding the San Jacinto district attorney’s office to turn over the hair for DNA testing. Prosecutors can appeal the decision.
The Innocence Project and the Observer hope that DNA tests on the hair will confirm Jones’ guilt or prove he was innocent, as he always claimed. (For Background, read the Observer’s 2007 story about the Jones case here. Time magazine also recently profiled the case here. A timeline is here.)
If DNA evidence exonerates Jones, it would mark the first time an innocent person was executed for a crime that DNA tests would later prove they didn’t commit. DNA tests have freed nearly 20 death row inmates in the United States before they were executed. Innocence attorneys and reporters have also uncovered quite a few troubling cases in which states executed inmates who were likely innocent. That includes the infamous case of Cameron Todd Willingham—the North Texas man put to death for starting the fire that killed his three children and who forensic experts say was convicted on flawed evidence.
But there hasn’t yet been a case in which DNA evidence has proven without a doubt that an innocent person was executed.
Questions about Jones’ guilt have long lingered.
And:
Jones claimed that he never entered the store.
Beyond fuzzy eyewitness accounts, and the questionable testimony of Dixon and Jordan (who later recanted his testimony), the only reliable evidence that linked Jones to the murder was a strand of hair found on the liquor store counter.
At Jones’ 1990 trial, a forensic expert testified that the hair appeared to come from Jones. But the technology didn’t exist at the time to determine if the hair matched Jones' DNA.
Advanced DNA testing techniques could now show if the hair was Jones'—and confirm his guilt. Or it could match Dixon, proving that he was the gunman who entered the store. That would exonerate Jones. Or tests could reveal the hair came from a third person and leave Jones’ guilt unknown.
The AP has just filed, "Texas judge orders DNA testing in execution case," via the Connect Amarillo.
A judge has ordered DNA testing on a strand of hair that was the only physical evidence linking an executed inmate to the murder that sent him to the Texas death chamber.
Judge Paul C. Murphy's order will lead to testing of a 1-inch-long strand that helped prosecutors convict Claude Jones of capital murder in the 1989 shooting death of 37-year-old liquor store owner Allen Hilzendager in San Jacinto County. Jones, who maintained his innocence, was executed in 2000.
An expert in hair analysis linked the hair to Jones at his trial. The other primary evidence was testimony from an accomplice, who later acknowledged in an affidavit that he had no firsthand knowledge of the killing.
Earlier coverage begins with the Time article noted above and here.
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