THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 10, 1994 TAG: 9412100255
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOE JACKSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 129 lines
Curtis L. Jones' life hung on a Revco receipt.
Jones was charged last December with the capital murder of a Lindenwood drug dealer, Jeffrey Flowers. Jones maintained his innocence at a trial in September that ended in a hung jury, and again at a second trial this week.
He couldn't have killed Flowers, he pleaded. The murder and drug-related robbery occurred at 1:47 p.m. on Dec. 6, 1993. But at 1:30 that day, he said, he was buying air freshener, carpet cleaner, paper towels and cigars at the Revco in Janaf Shopping Center, just steps from his home.
The receipt proved it, he said.
Take the receipt and talk to the clerk, he urged. Find neighbors who saw him during those crucial minutes. How could he have been at the Revco at 1:30 and across town committing a murder 17 minutes later?
But detectives didn't bite. They had an eyewitness - George Privott, the victim's guard - who said he watched the 22-year-old Jones shoot Flowers twice during a botched robbery.
Detectives also did not believe Jones' time argument. A detective clocked the drive from Janaf to 2404 Hale Street in Lindenwood at 11 minutes. ``A bright lie,'' prosecutor L. Dickerson Bragg called the alibi, the scheme of an intelligent man who reasoned that if he was seen at Janaf, he would not be charged for a killing across town.
So Jones' life depended on the countdown of minutes, ticked off in arguments before jurors as slowly as in a Hitchcock thriller, second by second, like the hands of a clock.
Whom did they believe: Jones or Privott? Was Jones a calculating killer or an innocent man caught in a web of a drug killing and the true murderer is still at large.
``We got into the jury room . . . and everyone said it was a sloppy police investigation. There just wasn't enough evidence to send a man to prison for life.
``There was no gun,'' the juror said.
``This was a robbery at a crack house. They (police) searched Jones' house and his mother's house. There was no drugs, no money, no bank account showing lots of money had been deposited. It was like, duh, where is the rest?''
Although one juror played devil's advocate, no one could justify the state's case, the juror said.
``I don't think this case should have gotten this far,'' the juror said. ``It was common sense. The evidence wasn't there. We didn't want to send a killer back on the street. But we also didn't want to send an innocent man to jail.''
FOR JONES, the day of the killing was steeped in mundane domestic routine.
That morning, Jones and his fiancee, Jean Sutton, were waiting for Jones' mother, Betty Perry. They all planned to ride to Sears at Pembroke Mall to buy a crib for their 2-month-old son.
But Jones and Sutton squabbled. When Perry and Sutton left to buy the crib at 11:30 a.m., Jones stayed home in a huff.
``I wish I'd gone with them,'' he later testified.
Jones took apart an old desk, then decided to clean the house because the smell of dirty diapers was awful, he said. He walked from his apartment, past the Janaf library to Revco, where he stayed for 10 to 15 minutes. There was a long line at the checkout counter. He joked with a clerk about the cigars, went home and sprinkled carpet cleaner through the house. Perry and Jones returned with the crib at about 1:45, the defense said.
At 1:47, Jeffrey Flowers, the 23-year-old leader of what police dubbed ``the biggest crack house in Lindenwood,'' was shot twice. Police arrived at 1:50 and were met by George Privott. Soon after, Privott said Jones had killed his boss.
The next day, investigators picked up Jones and took him to police headquarters.
Jones said Investigator R. Glen Ford waved some warrants in his face, slammed his hand on a desk and told him he killed Flowers, that ``little children and old ladies up and down the street'' saw him leave the house, that he was going to the electric chair.
Ford said Jones related details that only the killer could know.
But Jones made a critical mistake. He lied. He told detectives he had gone to buy the crib with his mother and fiance.
He told them he had never been to the house in Lindenwood. Later, he admitted buying crack there 50 or 60 times.
Why had he lied?
``Because I was scared,'' Jones testified.
``They told me I was going to the electric chair.''
To protect her son, Jones' mother also lied, the prosecutor said. She testified she bought the crib and nothing else, went to the loading dock and returned home by 1:45 p.m., supporting her son's tale that he was home at the time of the killing.
But store receipts showed she also bought a stereo receiver and probably didn't return until 2:10 at the earliest, Bragg said.
Three weeks after his arrest, Jones was released from jail on bond.
He returned to the apartment behind Janaf. The paper towels, carpet cleaner and air freshener were right where he had left them. The Revco receipt was on the floor.
The clerk later identified Jones in court.
But proving Jones' innocence was not as easy as getting the Revco clerk to identify him in court.
Changing details in the testimony of Privott and the other men in the crack house should have been investigated, something the police failed to do, Ellis said.
``Something happened in that house'' on the day of the murder, and members of Flowers' gang didn't want police to learn the whole story, Ellis said. So, she added, they chose a patsy - Curtis Jones.
In a letter dated May 5, Ellis summed up her entire defense in two sentences:
``I've told the commonwealth once and I'll say it again. By in essence persecuting Mr. Jones, you and the police are allowing the real killer to go free.''
On Friday, the jury agreed. ILLUSTRATION: Staff map
[Norfolk area]
[Shows sequence of events and locations concerning the defendant and
the murder.]
For copy of map, see microfilm
KEYWORDS: MURDER TRIAL
by CNB