Jones guilty on all counts
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on October 23, 2016 12:42 AM
Judge Arnold O. Jones II
WILMINGTON -- Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Arnold O. Jones II, District 8-B, was found guilty in federal court Friday on all three counts of an indictment charging him with bribing an officer to get copies of text messages between his wife and another man.
The verdict came after little more than 30 minutes of deliberation.
Jones did not comment on his conviction. His sentencing hearing is set for Jan. 23 in Wilmington at 10 a.m.
Geoff Hulse, one of Jones' attorneys, said Jones and his team plan to have a hearing on Nov. 7 in Wilmington to set aside the verdict.
Another of Jones' attorneys, Elliott Abrams, argued to the court after the verdict was handed down that Jones was guilty of a lesser crime of illegally accessing text messages.
Prosecuting attorney William Gilmore rebuffed that notion, saying to the court that the government had proved Jones' guilt on the three charges beyond a reasonable doubt and whether or not he was guilty of a different offense did not matter.
Judge James C. Fox replied that the defense was entitled to make the argument to the court.
Jones was convicted of paying bribes, paying gratuities and attempting to corruptly influence an official proceeding.
A three-count indictment was handed down against Jones on Nov. 3, 2015, and a superseding indictment that maintained the same corruption charges against Jones was handed down Aug. 23 of this year.
Hulse said Jones would still be running for re-election to his seat.
"He's on the ballot and running for re-election," Hulse said.
Dane Beavers, Director of the Wayne County Board of Elections, said Jones' name would not be removed from the ballot.
"He will still participate in the election," Beavers said.
Beavers said the question of Jones being able to still hold public office will ultimately be left up to the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
Jones was on trial for paying Federal Bureau of Investigations Task Force Officer Matthew Miller $100 in exchange for copies of text messages between his wife, Ingrid Lancaster Jones, and one of her work clients, Rui Dos Santos, of North Dartmouth, Mass., of whom Jones suspected his wife was having an affair with.
Dos Santos testified during the trial the last time he and Jones's wife had seen each other in person was Dec. 1, 2015, for a work meeting, and before that the last time they had seen each other in person was in July 2013.
Prior to the trial's start, Fox issued a court order barring entrapment from being used as a defense in the case, and barred any attempts by the defense to impeach Miller as a witness.
The court also ordered the jury in its instructions to the jury that entrapment was not an issue in this case and was not to be considered during deliberations.
During the five-day trial in federal court, the government called more than half a dozen witnesses to testify against Jones and presented a multitude of evidence, which included screenshots of text messages between Jones and Miller, audio recordings of telephone calls and video recordings of in person meetings between the two men.
Those videos showed Jones meeting with Miller in his unmarked Chevrolet Camaro in the parking lot of a McDonald's in Dudley to arrange payment for the text messages.
Jones and Miller initially agreed on "a couple cases of beer" as payment.
But, Miller testified during the trial, he does not like Bud Light.
Before the exchange was made, Miller called Jones and the two men agreed on $100 as payment instead.
Video evidence presented by the government during the trial shows Jones and Miller meeting at the bottom of the staircase inside the Wayne County Courthouse and making the exchange of $100 for the disk containing the messages Jones sought.
FBI Special Agent Ted Lea later testified that the disk never actually contained the text messages Jones sought.
During cross-examination by Jones' lead defense attorney, Joseph Cheshire, Cheshire argued if Jones thought he was doing something illegal that he would not have kept the text messages arranging the meeting and payment between he and Miller and would have deleted them instead.
The prosecution then presented evidence obtained by FBI forensic examination that showed Jones did indeed delete text messages., but were recovered. All of the text messages between the two men shown during the trial, the prosecution said, were provided by Miller.
Throughout the trial, the prosecution made the case that Jones had abused his power as a judge in an attempt to satiate a private curiosity of his own.
William Gilmore, one of two prosecuting attorneys for the government, said it is Jones' job as a judge to protect citizens from the overreach of law enforcement into their private affairs, and that Jones violated that duty by soliciting Miller to obtain text messages between his wife and another man.
Furthermore, the prosecution argued during closing arguments, Jones knew exactly what he was doing by asking Miller to get text messages between two people not involved in any sort of crime, which was to ask Miller to abuse his federal power bestowed upon and to break the law to satisfy Jones' own curiosity.
Cheshire argued that Jones gave $100 to Miller for the disk to only cover Miller's expenses incurred by going through the process of getting the text messages. Though Miller never actually got any text messages for Jones, Cheshire argued $100 would be an amount that would cover the cost of driving to and from the FBI office and federal courthouse in Greenville to do what Jones requested.
Given the unanimous verdict, the jury was not moved.
At his sentencing, Jones could face up to 37 years in prison and $750,000 in fines.
"The jury's verdict affirms a bedrock principle of the rule of law," said U.S. Attorney John Stuart Bruce. "No person holding a position of public trust in our legal system is permitted to subvert that system for his own personal objectives."