COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina Supreme Court has rejected the appeal of Timothy Jones Jr., the Lexington County man who murdered his five children and is currently serving on the state's death row.
Jones was convicted in 2019 of murdering his five children -- 8-year-old Merah Gracie, 7-year-old Elias, 6-year-old Nahtahn, 2-year-old Gabriel, and 1-year-old Abigail Elaine -- in 2014 and was sentenced to death in Lexington County. The Supreme Court rejected most of his appeal claims, but did agree the judge erred in two decisions. However, the court felt those were "harmless errors" and not grounds to overturn his conviction and death sentence.
The "harmless errors" cited in the opinion were:
- the exclusion of Dr. Adriana Flores' expert testimony. As a forensic pathologist, Flores was called by Jones' defense team to testify "regarding errors and incorrect conclusions" on the part of prosecution witness Dr. Kimberly Kruse. Kruse had determined Jones was malingering, pretending to have symptoms of mental issues. As Flores was not on the initial witness list, and numerous expert witnesses had testified on both sides, Flores gave her testimony in camera -- before the judge but not the jury -- so that the judge could determine whether or not to allow her testimony. The presiding Judge Eugene Griffith did not allow Flores to testify in open court. The Supreme Court ruled the trial court should have allowed the doctor to testify.
- the inclusion of autopsy photographs of the five children. Jones killed his five children by strangulation, placed their bodies in plastic bags and stacked them in the back of his SUV and then drove around with the bodies, across several states over the course of a week, while trying to determine what to do. The Court ruled "While the autopsy photographs should not have been admitted, we properly take note of Jones's calculated efforts to dispose of his children's bodies in a remote area to evade responsibility for what he had done. Were the autopsy photographs horrific? Absolutely. Were they inadmissible under Rule 403? Yes, for the reasons we have explained. However, after weighing the horrific facts of this case against the improper admission of the photographs, we hold the photographs did not contribute to the jury's sentence of death."
Jones killed the children on August 28, 2014 then drove around with their bodies for days before disposing of the remains in a field in Alabama.
Over the course of five weeks in both the trial and sentencing phase, prosecutors laid out the case that Jones was a cold-blooded killer, who went and killed each of his children after causing his first son, Nahtahn, to die by forcing him to do physical exercises. Nahtahn had wanted to go back to his mother before the killings, and in a phone call played in court between Jones and his father, the killer tried to blame the little boy for causing him to snap.
Jones' lawyers argued their client was insane at the time of the killings, but in finding him guilty of murder, the jury rejected that premise. In the sentencing phase, the children's mother, Amber Kyzer, asked for mercy for Jones, even though she said she'd understand if the jury chose death. Several of his Jones' relatives, including his father and grandmother, begged the jury to spare his life.
Jones is facing the death penalty and may still file appeal in US District Court.