By Alan Bean
Note: Dave Mann has written a well-researched feature story on this case for the Texas Observer.
Not that most Americans would care, but it appears that Texas executed another innocent man in 2000. This story from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram relates the sad fate of Claude Jones, a St. Jacinto man convicted of killing a liquor store clerk in the course of an armed robbery in 1989.
Prosecutors showed the jury a single hair that they claimed belonged to Jones. They couldn’t be sure, mind you, and no DNA test was conducted, but they were pretty sure.
But that wasn’t enough for a conviction, corroborating testimony was required. Enter Timothy Jordan. In exchange for a lenient sentence, he testified that he had served as an accomplice and that Jones was the trigger man.
Three years after Jones was executed, Jordan recanted his testimony. Need you ask why? He was threatened with dire consequences if he refused to cooperate with prosecutors. We’ve seen this movie before, haven’t we?
George W. Bush was fixin’ to leave the governor’s mansion for bigger and better things when he gave Jones’ execution the thumbs up. No one on his staff mentioned that the hair that so impressed jurors had not been tested.
Now it has and we know for a fact that the hair did not belong to Jones.
This doesn’t prove that Jones is innocent, of course, but it shows that the state of Texas fell far short of sufficient evidence. Instead of making up another cold case folder, they decided to invent evidence ex nihilo.
Notwithstanding the fact that the state can no longer produce any evidence linking Jones to the crime, the victim’s brother is sure they got the right guy. “I still think he was guilty,” Joe Hilzendager says. “I think they executed the right man.”
Friends of Justice 
The Clark County Prosecutor web site tells a different story. Apparently the hair was a small part of the conviction if it played a role at all. Jones bragging about the killing and eyewitness testimony seems to have been the reason he was convicted and put to death. http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/jones682.htm
Jones “had eleven prior convictions in Texas for crimes including murder, armed robbery, assault, and burglary. He served 6 years of a 9-year prison sentence from 1959 to 1963 and three years of a 5-year sentence from 1963 to 1965. In 1976, he was convicted of murder, robbery, and assault in Kansas and received a life sentence. While in Kansas prison, Jones killed another inmate. He was paroled in 1984.”
Sorry, they killed the right guy.
You are saying they killed a guy with a lot of stuff on his record. Fortunately, that’s not the way the system works. First, it is possible to be guilty of all sort of things while being innocent of the crime at bar. Secondly, the “bragging” theory is based in large part on recanted testimony. Third, the state needed something in addition to accomplice testimony (which is inherently weak), and the hair served as that something in this case. If the state was confident of its case, the hair would have been tested. There is a Texas Observer article that I will post when I get back to Texas. All that said, Gary, you are certainly right that Jones makes a poor poster boy for the abolition movement.
According to the link above, Jones apologized to the victim’s family before he was executed. Hair or no hair, sounds like he was guilty to me.
I haven’t commented on his guilt or innocence but merely on the sufficiency of the evidence presented at trial. Most murders go unsolved due to lack of evidence, but somebody is always guilty. The state must prove it. Was Jones the killer? I want the state to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
So he definitely murdered two people, there’s no dispute about that. And he may or may not have murdered a third person.
Sorry, but he should have been executed for the first two murders, so I’m not crying over him being executed for possibly doing the third.
Well, Alan, we just have to face it. Many people (apparently Marie among them) are perfectly willing to execute a man for crimes he has previously committed, even if he may not have done the later crime for which he was tried.
Texas and the US fail Winston Churchill’s standards re: crime and punishment.
Marie probably represents a whole host of people who are willing to execute a man with two previous murder convictions for
“possibly” (her word) doing a third. Marie, this is called double jeopardy. You are wanting to retry him for previous wrongs.
Apparently the state did prove this mans guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury and to all the appeals court judges. Perhaps your standards are unreasonable.
It has been proven, beyond reasonable doubt, that the hair presented to the jury as coming from Claude Jones did not in fact come from him. And then Governor Bush was not clued in on this fact before allowing the execution to proceed. This does not prove Claude Jones innocent, as Alan has said, but it does cast reasonable doubt over the conclusion of the jury and the CCA.
We are supposed to be the leader of the free world! And yet of the 23 countries that do execute of which we are ranked 5th, And China ranks 1st. Where as 623 countries do not! Oh by the way Iran and Iraq rates 4th 3rd . Yes, nice company we keep. How does the old saying go. We are judged by the company we keep!
you people think its right to murder “execute” people when they are on death row! kill a person for taking someone elses life! you may think thats right but heck if we keep doing folish things like this there will be no people left to execute im sorry but this idea in you peoples heads about thedeath penalty is just wrong. id rather a 100 people to get murder instead of the government executing one person that may possibaly be innocent