Murder in the First

Malinda Jones Found Guilty and Sentenced to Life Behind
Bars

by Becky Curry

The law finally caught up with the last of the Joneses this
Monday when Malinda Jones, convicted murderer of Jarrod Davidson,
was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole at
the end of the highly publicized case. Malinda Jones was a key
player in the plotted death of 27-year-old Davidson, her former
son-in-law, in a case that included an unplanned pregnancy and a
murderous scheme involving a decoy potted plant and a fatal rifle
shot.

Jones’s case was the last in a series of three. The first was
for her husband, Philip Jones, who was convicted of first-degree
murder for shooting Davidson. Philip is currently serving his own
life-sentence in a state hospital, where he is dying of lung
cancer. The second was for Malinda and Philip’s daughter Kelee
Davidson, Jarrod’s divorced wife. Kelee’s sentence was held to four
years in prison — her father made a plea bargain to exchange some
of his sentence for Kelee’s reduced sentence. Malinda Jones was
also offered a plea bargain but threw it out at the last minute and
decided to plead not guilty, claiming to have lost all memory of
the incident.

Before the sentence was handed down, the prosecution presented
new evidence that directly contradicted Jones’s claim of amnesia.
The evidence came in the form of a taped telephone call in which
Jones recalled circumstances from 13 years prior; Jones recited an
inventory of household possessions, including a coffee maker and a
washer and dryer she didn’t want to go unused.

What the prosecution did not mention, and what defense attorney
Robert Landheer used as a basis to apply for a retrial, was the
Joneses’ motive for conspiring to kill Davidson. In his own trial
Philip Jones testified that he had been a victim of childhood abuse
and claimed that he had killed Davidson in order to protect his
3-year-old granddaughter Malia from a similar fate. Kelee Davidson
had accused Jarrod of abusing Malia during a bitter custody battle,
but an investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing on Davidson’s
part.

Landheer was not allowed to use Kelee Jones’s claim that her
husband was abusing their daughter after Judge Frank Ochoa deemed
it irrelevant, explaining that the killing could not have been done
to defend Malia from an imminent threat since at the time of the
murder she was 90 miles away from her father. Landheer had argued
this issue before, claiming that it left the court with a one-sided
portrayal of the incident. At one point Landheer even tried to have
Judge Ochoa replaced.

After all of the evidence was presented, including enlarged
photos of the victim, which prompted some of the Davidsons to leave
the room, both families made impact statements. “Just so people
know,” Jarrod’s mother began, “there is no closure, just the hole
in my heart that will always be there.” The rest of the Davidson
statements were read aloud and addressed to Judge Ochoa, but many
deteriorated to tears and unrehearsed statements of condemnation.
Members of the Jones family spoke next, beginning with Casey Jones
Johnson, the eldest of the Jones daughters. “She doesn’t have a
mean bone in her body,” she said of her mother. “She is the most
intelligent, passionate person I have ever met. I know she must
have felt truly desperate to save her granddaughter.”

In addition to the sentence of life in prison without the
possibility of parole, Judge Ochoa awarded the Davidson family
$5,000 in damages. Malinda Jones has 60 days to appeal her
sentence, and sources have indicated that she will do so. According
to defense attorney Landheer, Jones rejected the initial plea
bargain because it did not offer any reduction to her daughter’s
sentence, as Philip’s bargain had. Had Jones accepted the plea
bargain, she might have lived to see the end of a 28-year sentence.
If her appeal proves unsuccessful, she will live out the rest of
her life behind bars.