Lawyer: Arizona death row inmate free after 29 years for a crime he did not commit

Arizona has released a man from death row after serving 29 years for a crime he was wrongfully convicted for, according to his lawyer and online images.

Barry Jones was sentenced in Pima County Superior Court to death after being found guilty of fatally assaulting Rachel Gray, a 4-year-old child, in 1994.

"He was released a couple hours ago and is with his legal team," Ethel Mwedziwendira, a spokesperson for Jones' legal team, said in an email to The Arizona Republic.

Official sources could not immediately confirm Jones was freed, but statements from the Attorney General's Office and Pima County Attorney's Office described the chain of events that led to their agreement to vacate his death sentence.

“After almost 30 years on death row for a crime he did not commit, Barry Jones is finally coming home,” said Federal Public Defender Cary Sandman, whose office has represented Barry Jones for over 20 years in a prepared statement. “Mr. Jones spent nearly three decades on Arizona’s death row despite compelling evidence that he was innocent of charges that he had fatally assaulted Rachel Gray.”

In 2018, a federal district court judge ordered that Jones’ convictions were to be vacated based on the compelling medical evidence that it was not Jones who caused Rachel’s injuries. A unanimous panel of Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed that order.

But the U.S. Supreme Court ignored its own precedent and said federal courts had no power to even consider his case.

Despite the high court decision, the State of Arizona was still able to reconsider the new evidence. After careful review, the Arizona Attorney General agreed that Jones' conviction and death sentence should be vacated and asked the Pima County Superior Court to vacate them both.

As a result, Jones agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder because he neglected to take Rachel to the hospital the night before she died, despite seeing how sick she was, from an unknown fatal injury, according to a news release from the Pima County Attorney's Office.

Pima County Superior Court Judge Kyle Bryson spelled out the details in a June 15 court order.

"On or about May 1 to 2, 1994, under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life, Barry Lee Jones recklessly engaged in conduct which created a grave risk of death and thereby caused the death of Rachel Gray, when he failed to seek or contributed to the failure to seek medical care for Rachel Gray," the court ruled.

"The court has imposed a sentence of 25 calendar years with credit for time served," the order stated, adding that Jones "Is now eligible for release from prison. It is therefore ordered that the Arizona Department of Corrections, Reentry and Rehabilitation release (him) forthwith."

State prison officials said he had been in custody in Eyman Prison Complex in Florence.

Jones was kept on death row because of the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Shinn v. Ramirez. In that case, the high court decided to not follow precedent and said federal courts had no power to consider Jones' case and despite the evidence that proved he was wrongfully convicted and denied a "constitutionally just trial," Sandman stated in the news release.

At Jones' trial in 1995, his court-appointed lawyer failed to conduct an investigation into whether Rachel died as a result of an injury she sustained while in Jones' care, the news release stated. The release stated Rachel sustained her injuries when she was not in his care, but the jury never heard any of that evidence. It convicted him and recommended he be sentenced to death.

The release of Jones marks the 12th time an inmate on Arizona's death row has been exonerated since 1975.

This is a developing story. Check back here for updates.

Staff writers Jimmy Jenkins, Miguel Torres, Serena Lin, Joseph Jafaari, and Sarah Lapidus contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Barry Jones, wrongfully convicted, released after 29 years