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Jones v. State

The trial court did not err in permitting a state's witness to testify that the defendant fit the profile of a spousal abuser to rebut his testimony that he killed his wife by accident.

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The appellant, George Jones, appeals from his conviction for the felony murder of his wife, Kate Jones.1 On appeal, Jones contends, among other things, that the trial court erred in admitting testimony that improperly implied that Jones fit the profile of a spousal abuser and erred in permitting two witnesses to testify regarding out-of-court statements made to them by his wife. For the following reasons, we conclude that these contentions, as well as Jones’s other contentions, present no grounds for reversing his conviction for felony murder. Accordingly, we affirm.

1. At 1:00 am on November 1, 1998, police were summoned to the home of Mr. and Ms. Jones. The couple had been married for 31 years. The victim was dead from a single gunshot wound to the chest. Earlier that day, she had gone to the home of a woman named Ms. Smith, with whom Jones was having an affair. Jones’s car was parked in the parking lot of Smith’s apartment building, and Ms. Jones knocked on the door of Smith’s apartment. Neither Jones nor Smith answered the door. Kate Jones then deflated all of the tires on Jones’s car and wrote a message on the windshield with lipstick and left. According to statements that Jones later gave to the police and according to his testimony at trial, his wife’s message stated, “Don’t come home. If you do, I’ll kill you.” Smith, on the other hand, stated that, although there were a number of words written on the windshield, she did not see the threat recalled by Jones and only specifically remembered seeing the words “I know.”

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