Justice: Why can't the prosecutors win?

[Tiassa]

A man named Jerry B. Jones was convicted of stabbing his wife to death. An appeals court overturned his conviction. Charges were reinstated for whatever grounds, and Jones was convicted a second time. For the second time, an appeals court has overturned his conviction.

- Court reverses Jones' murder sentence for second time (Seattle Times)

Apparently the latest issue is that during the second trial, the judge barred defense attorneys from attempting to substantiate their defense--mistaken identity. Embittered Snohomish County prosecutor Mark Roe complained that the latest blow to the prosecution sends the message that "you can point your finger at anyone."

David Koch, the Seattle attorney who handled Jones' appeal, said his client's former neighbor had a motive to kill Lee Jones. He said the boy, who was 15 at the time of her slaying, was angry at Lee Jones because she forbade him from dating the couple's daughter.

In 2001, during Jones' second trial, Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Gerald Knight wouldn't let defense attorneys bring up allegations of threats and violence against the neighbor in the years after Lee Jones' slaying, Koch said. The former neighbor allegedly threatened to kill one woman with scissors, threw beer cans at one girl's father and threatened to kill another girl's mother after she forbade her daughter from seeing him, according to the appeals-court ruling.

Since Jones' first conviction in 1989 he has insisted that he wasn't given a fair trial because jurors didn't hear enough evidence about his former neighbor.

In 1998, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour ruled that Jones' first trial attorney failed to investigate the boy adequately. The attorney didn't look into the boy's behavior, the fact he had called the Joneses' house several times on the night of the killing, and that he lied about his whereabouts that night.

So the guy gets a new trial after his first conviction because he can demonstrate that his attorney represented him poorly. Yet at his second trial the judge forbids his current counsel from entering that very evidence?

It's a good thing his sentence was 25 to life, and not the death penalty. It's fourteen years later and we're still fighting over that original conviction, it looks like. But it's a better shot than Mr. Jones would have in Texas, so ....

May justice prevail. Whatever that actually amounts to anymore.