A Missouri man spent nearly 17 years behind bars for robbery until his doppelganger was discovered — and the other guy looked so much like him that authorities decided to toss out his conviction.
“This has been one of the most bizarre scenarios that I’ve seen in my 27 years of prosecuting cases,” Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe admitted Monday as he announced he was dismissing charges against Richard Anthony Jones.
Howe added that he is not planning to retry Jones, the Kansas City Star reported.
Jones, 41, had been serving a 19-year jail sentence for a 1999 robbery when he heard other inmates buzzing that another prisoner looked just liked him — and even shared his first name, Star said.
It’s unclear what the other man was locked up for, and Jones never saw his doppelganger. But he told two legal interns assigned to his case about the rumors, according to Alice Craig, one of Jones’ lawyers.
The interns brought the message back to their superiors at the Midwest Innocence Project and the Paul E. Wilson Defender Project, who dug further into the case.
It turned out that not only did the other man bear an uncanny resemblance to Jones, he also lived closer to the site of the crime.
Jones’ doppelganger, Ricky Amos, used to live with his mother in Kansas City, Kansas, near the address of the incident, Craig said. Jones lived across the state line in Kansas City, Mo.
“When I saw that picture, it made sense to me,” said Jones, who has denied committing the robbery, to the Star.
“Either you’re going to think [we’re] the same person, or you’re going to be like, ‘Man, these guys, they look so much alike.’ ”
His lawyers showed the two men’s photos to the victim, two witnesses and the prosecutor in Jones’ case — and all four admitted they could not tell the pair apart, according to the Star.
While stopping short of accusing Amos — who denied committing the crime at a hearing last week — a judge determined that based on the new evidence, authorities no longer had enough information to support Jones’ conviction. The next day, Jones was a free man.
Jones was accused of mugging of a woman in a Walmart parking lot. He lost several appeals over the years, the Star reported.
There was no DNA, fingerprint or other physical evidence that linked Jones to the crime, and prosecutors had only used eyewitnesses’ testimonies to convict him, the paper reported.
The lineup of photos shown to the victim and other witnesses was “highly suggestive” because Jones was the only person who fit the description of a Hispanic or light-skinned black man, his lawyers told the Star.
“Everybody has a doppelganger,” said one of Jones’s lawyers, Alice Craig. “Luckily, we found his.”
Pastatrees on January 4th, 2018 at 14:32 UTC »
HelloImRIGHT on January 4th, 2018 at 14:11 UTC »
This made me think of a case my dad had just handled. A retired attorney, he had a friend whose daughter was arrested. She had been mixed up in drugs and shit for a while and hadn't talked to her family in years.. Anyway, when she was arrested she gave the cops her sister's name(whom had never gotten in trouble). A few weeks later, she received a bill saying she owed someone 20grand. Her credit score subsequently dropped some 200 points, and her name was online as being arrested for ccfraud among other things. (In arizona your arrest record is posted online even after you have been acquitted)
So, my dad goes down to the jail says he is this ladies' attorney and that they have the right girl, it's just under the wrong name. They basically said "not our problem". He then writes a letter saying why dont you take her fingerprints, look at previous mugshots, or do any research at all? No response.
So he starts the process of suing Maricopa County. This gets their attention. They finally say why dont you and your client come down to the courthouse on X day and we can resolve this. He says "no, my client and I aren't going anywhere because this is all a result of the detention center not doing their job. My client literally just existed and now her financials, reputation, and job are all on the line because of your county employee's incompetence.
We'll see where it goes from here...havent heard anything yet.
edit: leave for two hours come back to 150 comments. I txtd my dad to ask if anything had happened, I'll let ya'll know what he says. dont expect any awesome ending they'll probably fix it and shrug it off like it was nothing.
edit 2:
Me : Yo pops whatever happened to that lady whose sister used her name when she got busted?
Dad:It got straightened out - the prosecutor wanted me and her to come to court. I said no, not unless they would pay me and my client for missing work - they folded.
Sorry guys- no super cool ending. My dad woulda gone to bat for this lady if he needed to. He loves to regularly make cops look like morons - which isn't hard.
im_nice_dammit on January 4th, 2018 at 13:02 UTC »
Why is it even a possibility to put someone in jail for 19 years based solely on eyewitness testimony?
Seriously the prosecutorial system needs to watch any one of the gazillion documentaries and studies available showing how worthless eyewitnesses are. It's not their fault, it's just the way the brain works.