Levon Junior Jones
Alleged Crime(s)
On February 28, 1987, Leamon Grady, a local bootlegger, was found murdered in his home in Duplin County. In 1990, after a reward was offered for information leading to an arrest, Lovely Lorden came forward claiming that her ex-boyfriend Levon Jones had murdered Grady. Lorden gave five different statements with conflicting details, and in the absence of any physical evidence, she became the key to the state's case against Levon Jones, Larry Lamb and Ernest Matthews (the two other men Lorden named). Lorden received $4000 from the governor’s office as a reward for the information she provided. All three of the men Lorden identified were charged with first-degree murder on August 14, 1992. Trial and Conviction In August of 1993, Jones's co-defendent Larry Lamb was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Jones’s trial began in November. The state sought the death penalty. As in Lamb’s trial, informant Lovely Lorden served as the key to the prosecution’s case. Jones’s defense attorney’s did little to prepare for his trial, interviewing no witnesses and filing no motions. The attorney’s, one of whom was related to the victim, also failed to invoke Jones’s history of mental illness in an attempt to persuade the jury not to apply the death penalty. On November 8, 1993, the jury found Jones guilty and sentenced him to death. The conviction was upheld by the state Supreme Court in 1996. Post-Conviction and Exoneration In 2006 U.S. District Court Judge Terrence Boyle ordered Jones off death row and overturned his conviction, declaring Jones’s attorney’s performance “constitutionally deficient.” In the following years, Jones remained in prison as prosecutors prepared for retrial. One year later, in December of 2007, Lovely Lorden recanted her testimony and admitted that a detective had coached her on what to say at the trials of Jones and his co-defendant Larry Lamb. In an affadavit Lorden described her testimony as “simply not true.” In May of 2008, Duplin County District Attorney Dewey Hudson dropped all charges against Jones and requested his release. Jones was freed on May 2, 2008, after spending 13 years on death row. Written by Amanda Grigg |
Location: Duplin County, North Carolina
Crime: Murder, Robbery Conspiracy Victim(s): Leamon Grady Date of Crime: 1987 Date of Conviction: 1993 Date of Exoneration: 2008 Sentence: Death Race: Black Gender: Male Age at Arrest: 28 Contributing Factors: Perjury, misconduct, inadequate legal defense DNA Exoneration: No |