The Case Against Jones

On February 21, 2001, Quintin Phillippe Jones was convicted of Capital Murder of his great aunt, Berthena Bryant, under Texas Penal Code Section 19.03(a).  During the penalty phase of Quin’s trial, the State presented the jury with a psychiatric assessment of Quin and expert testimony regarding his “future dangerousness.” 

After the jury answered the future dangerousness special issue question affirmatively, and found no grounds in mitigation of punishment, the Tarrant County District Court sentenced Quin to death by lethal injection. After exhaustion of Quin’s post-conviction legal proceedings, the Court issued a Death Warrant and set May 19, 2021 as the date for execution of Quin “by intravenous injection of substance or substances in a lethal quantity sufficient to cause death and until the said QUINTIN PHILLIPPE JONES is dead.”

What is clemency?

The clemency process occurs only after all judicial proceedings have been completed. Jones has exhausted all his viable judicial proceedings and clemency is his only remaining option for living out his days in prison.  In Texas, a prisoner on death row can have his death sentence reduced to a sentence of life in prison if a majority of the Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends clemency to Governor Abbott, and the Governor agrees.

Clemency “is deeply rooted in our Anglo-American tradition of law and is the historic remedy for preventing miscarriages of justice where judicial process has been exhausted.” Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390, 411-412 (1993).  It is “a matter of grace entirely distinct from judicial proceedings.”  Harbison v. Bell, 556 U.S. 180, 192 (2009).

The family opposes the death penalty

Quin has a strong relationship with his great-aunt Mattie Long, sister of the victim.

In this case, the victim’s family is Jones’s family.  Executing Jones will only serve as a second trauma for a family that has already experienced significant loss.  Both Mattie Long, the victim’s sister, and Benjamin Jones, the victim’s great-nephew, are pleading that the State not execute Jones.  Mattie and her sister were close, and her death was profoundly painful.  But Mattie says that executing Jones cannot bring her sister back.  Mattie visits Jones, her great-nephew, in prison.  She says that Jones has grown up and changed for the better.  She recognizes Jones’s remorse. Jones’s twin brother Benjamin also recognizes Jones’s remorse and regularly writes him letters. 

Both have asked that Jones’s life be spared.

“He is not asking for us to forget”

Jones has accepted full responsibility for his crimes and has repeatedly expressed profound remorse and regret for the murder of his great-aunt Berthena Bryant. He is not asking for forgiveness and is asking to serve out his natural life in prison. In the 20-plus years he has spent on death row, he has transformed himself into a decent, compassionate, thoughtful person.

Evidence has been discredited

To sentence Quin to death, the jury needed to find that there was a probability that he would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society, even while in a high-security prison.  But the evidence presented at trial to support this finding of future dangerousness has since been discredited.

 — The State argued that Jones was a “psychopath” to show his future dangerousness.  But “psychopathy” is not recognized as a disorder by the American Psychiatric Association.

— The “Hare Psychopathy Checklist” that both the State and Defense relied upon to argue about Jones’s future dangerousness has since been fully discredited. Robert Hare himself — the creator of the checklist — published a scientific paper in 2017 that concluded that Hare checklist, “did not meet the standard recommended for criminal cases.”

— The assessment by Dr. Price, the State’s expert, of Jones was subjective and unreliable.  The Hare checklist as applied in Jones’s case reflects its subjectivity and lack of scientific validity.

— Jones’s conduct during incarceration over the past two decades belies the conclusion by the State’s expert that he would be a danger to others even while in prison. Jones has no disciplinary records indicating any violent incidents and has functioned well in his twenty-one years on death row.

Citations to scientific research

Neuroscience and Quin’s youth

Recent neuroscience findings show that people’s brains do not reach full maturity until at least their mid-20s.  This new scientific research thus calls into question the reliability of any psychological evaluation that would assess the “future dangerousness” of defendants in their early 20s, like Jones.  Back in 2005, the Supreme Court categorically banned imposing the death sentence on people under the age of 18 because those defendants are still maturing, thus making it “difficult for expert psychologists to differentiate between the juvenile offender whose crime reflects transient immaturity and the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption.”  Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 544, 573 (2005).  This new research now demonstrates that this same difficulty is present for people in their early 20s. 

In short, the research shows that any psychological assessment of Quin made at trial was unreliable to predict his future dangerousness because there was no way to determine whether he was in a time of “transient immaturity” or was a person with “irreparable corruption.”  Decades of Jones’s subsequent behavior make it clear that he does not pose an ongoing threat to society. Jones has no record of violent transgressions during his time in prison.  And his medical records, even in the early years of his incarceration, show no need for psychological treatment.  Far from presenting a danger to those in the prison where he lives, Jones can peacefully live out his days in prison as he has done since the beginning of his incarceration.

He received unequal treatment

The Texas courts sentenced “Red” Roosa, who was convicted of two murders, to life in prison, and he will be eligible for parole in September 2039. Roosa, who is white, is 18 years older than Jones and was the gang’s ringleader. Meanwhile, Jones, who is African American, was put on death row. At the time of the crime, Roosa was 38 and Jones was 20.

Inadequate representation

Counsel assigned to represent Jones at trial and in his state and initial federal post-conviction proceedings failed him – repeatedly missing filing deadlines, failing to challenge critical scientific and legal issues, and neglecting to pursue essential lines of inquiry in Jones’s defense.