Joseph Jones found guilty of first-degree felony murder in 2018 backyard shooting

Feb. 20—After four days of testimony, a jury of six women and six men deliberated for less than two hours Monday before finding Joseph Jones guilty of felony murder in the 2018 shooting death of Robert Romero.

The jurors also convicted Jones of aggravated burglary, a charge that was the basis for his count of first-degree felony murder. The crime requires jurors to find a defendant killed someone during the commission of another felony.

Jones, who did not take the stand in his own defense, stood silently between his defense attorneys as the judge read the verdict.

He did not react.

Jones, 29, fatally shot Romero, 52, in the wee hours of a summer morning in Romero's backyard.

Defense attorney Sydney West didn't dispute Jones was the person who killed Romero and didn't provide any evidence in his defense, but told jurors in her opening and closing statements Jones hadn't killed Romero to avoid getting caught, as prosecutors said.

She argued the death might have been the result of Romero taking the law into his own hands when he caught Jones in his yard — forcing the younger, smaller man to fight back.

West told jurors the Las Casitas neighborhood in Santa Fe where Romero lived with his family was close to a homeless shelter and park, and burglaries in the area — and rising crime in Santa Fe in general — might have made Romero more determined to catch and hold Jones for police that night.

"When Mr. Romero saw a stranger running through his yard, it might have been his feeling that this was a burglar — but there's no evidence to suggest that," West said in her opening statement.

"But he also might just have taken the law into his own hands," she added.

Romero had wounds on his knuckles that indicated he'd fought with Jones, the defense attorney said, and the angle of his bullet wound indicated Romero might have been on top of Jones when he was shot.

This wasn't first-degree murder, West said.

She argued it was voluntary manslaughter.

District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies attacked that theory in her closing arguments.

"Defense ... implies that this was a neighborhood that was unsafe," she said. "There was a change in the atmosphere because of homelessness and drugs and burglaries, so Robert Romero, the victim in this case, took the law into his own hands.

"But ladies and gentlemen, that is simply not true," Carmack-Altwies said. "... There was no rash of burglaries in this neighborhood or change in the neighborhood and the tone. There was no neighborhood watch until after this horrible, senseless crime took place."

When Romero's wife and daughter heard noises, their first thought was that there was an animal in the house, the district attorney said.

"Why?" she asked. "Because their neighborhood was safe. It was quiet."

The thought of an intruder didn't even cross their minds when they were awakened at 2 a.m., she said. "This was a safe community. Don't let them paint this as though it was an everyday occurrence."

Carmack-Altwies said, "The defense tried to make it that Joseph is just a little, weak little guy. Well, that's true. He's a small, little man.

"But he had a big gun," she added. "He's a sneaky little man, and what he did was he tried to break into the Romeros' home because he was going to take something, and when he got caught by Robert Romero, he pulled out his gun ... and he shot him down."

Santa Fe police investigators initially had no suspect, motive or leads, and the case went unsolved for nearly two years before Jones' arrest.

Police tested DNA on a pair of glasses and a small flashlight found at the scene, but the DNA profile did not match any in a national database maintained by the FBI.

Detectives then sought the help of Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia-based company that used technology developed by the medical industry to create a genetic profile from the DNA left at the scene. The company compared the profile with those on a public database, searching for individuals who might share similar genetics — the way someone might search for a long-lost relative, according to a statement released by the Santa Fe Police Department at the time.

The DNA helped police narrow potential suspects down to three individuals, prosecutors said during the trial: Jones, his brother and a cousin.