Ex parte Antonio Devoe Jones.

In March 2004, Antonio Jones was convicted of capital murder for the intentional killing of Ruth Kirkland during the course of a burglary. The jury recommended, by a vote of 11 to 1, that Jones be sentenced to death. The trial court accepted the jury's recommendation and sentenced Jones to death. In January 2009, Jones filed a Rule 32, Ala. R. Crim. P., petition to challenge conviction and sentence. In 2014, the trial court entered an order summarily dismissing Jones's Rule 32 petition. Jones appealed the dismissal of his Rule 32 petition, and the Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed Jones's appeal in accordance with that court's decision in Loggins v. Alabama, 910 So. 2d 146 (Ala Crim. App. 2005), and the Court of Civil Appeals' decision in K.P. v. Madison County Department of Human Resources, 243 So. 3d 835 (Ala. Civ. App. 2017). Jones then petitioned the Alabama Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, arguing that the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals dismissing his appeal of the dismissal of his Rule 32 petition conflicted with the Supreme Court's decisions interpreting Rule 29, Ala. R. Crim. P. The Supreme Court determined the record conclusively established a timely order reinstating Jones's Rule 32 petition was issued on September 7, 2010, two days before the trial court was to lose jurisdiction to rule on Jones's postjudgment motion to reinstate the petition. The order itself was dated and signed on September 7, 2010. When it was discovered that the circuit clerk had failed to timely enter the order reinstating Jones's Rule 32 petition, the same order was forwarded again to the circuit clerk to be entered, which the clerk did on September 29, 2010. "[T]he trial court's order granting Jones's Rule 29 motion in this case did not alter the date on which the order was rendered. . . . it simply corrects the circuit clerk's ministerial error in failing to timely enter the order, so that the record accurately reflects Justice Kennedy's original order reinstating Jones's Rule 32 petition as having been rendered on September 7, 2010." Accordingly, the trial court did not err in granting Jones's Rule 29 motion to reflect that the order rendered on September 7, 2010, reinstating Jones's Rule 32 petition was entered by the trial court effective on that same date. The Court of Criminal Appeals was reversed and the matter remanded for further proceedings. View "Ex parte Antonio Devoe Jones." on Justia Law