Lonnie Jones - Perjury / False Accusation

Jones, Lonnie; murder; NRE: perjury/false accusation, prosecutor misconduct, misconduct that is not withholding evidence, knowingly permitting perjury

[818:285]; 2nd Dept. 7/8/06; reversed, due to prosecutor misconduct

"[W]e are satisfied that the verdict is not against the weight of the evidence..."

"However, a new trial is required becuse the prosecutor failed to correct false trial testimony by one the [prosecution's] witnesses...Here, a prosecution witness falsely testified that she had identified [Jones's] nephew in a lineup as one of the two people who shot at a group which included the victim..."

from Records and Briefs:

[3] "On July 2, 2001, three weeks after he was released from prison, Willie Haywood was with four of his friends in the courtyard of the Seapark housing complex on Coney Island, Brooklyn, when a man standing behind a wall at the edge of the courtyard opened fire at the group with a TEC-9 semi-automatic weapon. Haywood, a drug dealer and member of the bloods street gang, was shot five times and died later that evening. His friend Terron Savoy, also a drug dealer, was shot twice in the arm and survived. The other three men who were with them at the time -- Emil Smith, Jamar Miller and Sharod Jones, also known as 'Pooh bear' -- were unharmed."

[4] "In the initial investigation, the surviving complainant, Savoy, told the police that he did not see anything. Over the next two months, the police focused on a number of individuals believed to be rival drug dealers seeking to defend their turf from Haywood after his release from prison. Nearly two months after the shooting, Savoy's girlfriend, Robin Fludd, told the police that she had seen the shooting from her ninth-floor terrace* and claimed that...Lonnie Jones and his nephew Markquice were the shooters."

[* Well, here we go again: Yet another 'witness' is claiming to have been able to identify persons on the street from several floors above -- this time, eight. That's absurd. Those being identified would have to have been (helpfully) looking straight up at the viewer, holding their faces still long enough to be identified. But even then, without binoculars or a telescope, from that high up, this would still have been impossible.]

"Lonnie Jones, age 34, had no association with any drug or gang activity. At the time of the accusation, he was living in the Bronx with his common-law wife and children, working regular hours as a boiler repairman. Despite the lack of any evidence of motive or connection between [himself] and the crime, he was indicted for second-degree murder and first-degree assault in the Haywood-Savoy shooting.

"The [prosecution's] case at trial relied entirely on the testimony of Fludd. Savoy did not testify. Nor did Emil Smith, Jamar Miller...or Sharod Jones."

[It's very interesting that none of these direct (i.e., street-level) witnesses testified. This could be because they truly did not see anything, what they saw was not what the police/prosecution wanted to hear, or, they were simply unwilling to 'snitch.']

"The defense argued that Fludd did not witness the shooting and that, if she indeed was present, she would not have been able to see the shooter's face and make an accurate identification. In addition, the defense presented three family members who testified that [Jones] worked a full day on the day of the shooting, spent a normal evening at home and went to work early the next morning. The [5] defense also called several eyewitnesses from the Seapark complex who testified that Fludd arrived at the Seapark complex after the shooting, and several eyewitnesses described a single shooter who was tall and thin, in contrast to [Jones], who is short and heavily built. Finally, Markquice Jones, whom Fludd also accused of the shooting, testified for the defense that when the crime occurred he was on the 23rd floor of the Seapark complex, in a room full of people." [Latter emphasis original.]

[16] "Fludd testified that on the night of July 2, 2001, she and her neighbor Bernice McNeer, were sitting on the balcony in front of Fludd's apartment. At approximately 10:30 p.m....Fludd testified that she saw Lonnie Jones and his nephew, Markquice Jones, both of whom she knew, approach from behind a wall at the north end of the courtyard and open fire..."

[17] "Even though Fludd claimed that she had just seen her boyfriend and the father of her child gunned down, she testified that she did not rush down to the courtyard to see if he survived or to call for help. Indeed, she returned to her apartment and spent some 'twenty or twenty-five minutes' changing out of her lounging clothes... When she did go downstairs, the area was filled with police officers, but she did not speak to them to tell them what she later claimed she had seen. Nor did she speak to police at Coney Island Hospital when she visited Savoy later that night."

[One plausible explanation for this curious behavior on Fludd's part is that detectives 'encouraged' her to identify Jones as the shooter.]

from NRE synopsis (by Stephanie Denzel):

"On July 2, 2001, Willie Hayward and Terron Savoy were shot in the courtyard of an apartment complex in Brooklyn...Hayward, a member of the Bloods street gang and a drug dealer, was killed. Savoy survived and three other men who were him him including Sherrod* Jones, were uninjured. All four men told police that a tall, thin man in a black hooded sweatshirt shot at them."

[* This first name is spelled differently here than in the above legal decisions.]

"On July 5, police received an anonymous phone tip naming Lenny Parker, aka 'Supreme' (a rival drug dealer of Hayward's) and 'AK' as the assailants. The call was later found to have come from Terron Savoy's girlfriend, Robin Fludd.

"On August 25, 2001, Savoy encountered Markquice Jones in the stairwell of the apartment complex where the original shooting took place. Savoy demanded that Markquice Jones tell him who had shot Savoy and killed Hayward; when Markquice denied knowing who the shooter was, Savoy fired shots at him. Uninjured, but fearing for his life, Jones called his uncle, Lonnie Jones, and asked to be picked up and taken to Lonnie's apartment in the Bronx. When Lonnie Jones arrived, he ran into Robin Fludd, and asked why Savoy was shooting at his nephew. Fludd responded that if his nephew didn't name the shooter, Jones and his family would be sorry. Following the argument, and almost two months after the shooting, Fludd told police that she saw Lonnie and Markquice Jones kill Hayward, in contradiction to her July 5th anonymous phone tip."

[So, the only reason why Lonnie Jones is even in the picture here is because he's trying to help and protect his nephew. When Jones has the temerity to ask Fludd why Savoy was shooting at Markquice, Fludd threatens him to either 'tell, or else.' Then, Fludd changes her story to say that Lonnie Jones was the shooter. She made him 'sorry,' alright.]

"On September 7, police arrested Lonnie Jones, a short, stocky boiler repairman, in his apartment in the Bronx. Later that day Fludd identified Lonnie Jones in a lineup, and told police that he had threatened her with a gun.

"At trial, Fludd's testimony was the primary evidence against Jones. She claimed to have seen Lonnie Jones and his nephew, Markquice Jones, shoot at the group while she was standing on her ninth-floor balcony, and said that she picked both men out of a police lineup. Jones's wife, daughter and two of his daughter's friends all testified that Jones was home the night of the shooting.

"During deliberations, the jury sent several notes to the court asking why Markquice Jones was not on trial. The prosecutor admitted to the judge that only Lonnie Jones was in the lineup; but despite the fact that the prosecutor had not corrected Fludd when she falsely testified that she had identified both men, the judge did not inform the jury of this falsehood by Fludd. On November 9, 2002, the jury convicted Lonnie Jones of second-degree murder, first-degree assault and third-degree intimidating a witness. He was sentenced to 37 years to live in prison.

"With assistance from a Legal Aid attorney, Jones secured pro bono representation from the prestigious law firm Davis Polk & Wardell. Jones's new attorneys interviewed Sherrod Jones (no relation), who stated that the person he saw kill Hayward was not Lonnie Jones, whom he knew because they grew up in the same neighborhood. Defense investigators also located three women who said Fludd could not have witnessed the shootings from her balcony [because] she was out having dinner with them at a restaurant when the crime occurred.

"On July 18, 2006, [a Manhattan court] remanded Jones's case for a new trial. On January 30, 2007, after Fludd's credibility was demolished by the defense witnesses, a jury acquitted Jones of all charges and he was released. He had spent 5-1/2 years in prison, most of it in protective custody because of a $20,000 contract that Hayward's gang had put on his life. After his release, Jones immediately left the state for his own safety. In 2009, the New York Court of Claims ordered the state to pay Jones $1.8 million in compensation."

[All emphases added unless otherwise noted.]