Judge orders DNA test in case

July 19, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

AKRON

A judge in Ohio has ordered DNA testing in a 17-year-old murder case that produced dozens of suspects before a conviction was reached in 1995.

Dewey Amos Jones III is serving 30 years to life in prison for aggravated murder and aggravated robbery in the 1993 death of 71-year-old Goodyear retiree Neal Rankin at his home in Akron.

Summit County Common Pleas Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove ordered DNA testing of preserved samples of biological evidence from the home, where Rankin was bound with rope, beaten and shot in the head. The evidence has not been tested previously for DNA.

Cosgrove said the tests should be done “in the interests of justice.” A hearing is planned for Tuesday.

Jones’ attorney, Carrie Wood of the Ohio Innocence Project, said Akron police have the evidence and that it will be tested in a Cincinnati lab. She said no physical evidence links Jones to the crime scene.

Among items to be tested are a handgun, a rope, a bloody handprint and scrapings from Rankin’s fingernails.

Jones, 48, told the Akron Beacon Journal in May that he is innocent.

“I had nothing to do with it at all, in any way, shape or form,” he said at the Summit County Jail, where he was being held temporarily after a court hearing. “I know I’m going to get out. I know the truth is going to come out. I’ve been praying for it for years.”

After Rankin’s death, authorities took 15 months to make their first arrest in the case, and aggravated-murder charges were filed and dismissed against others before Jones was tried.

Among those charged were Jones’ wife, sister and an acquaintance. Charges were dismissed within days of their trials, and prosecutors said then there wasn’t enough evidence against them.

Cosgrove’s order shows that an inmate who was jailed with Jones in 1994 testified that he confessed the crime. Jones said the inmate and another plotted to lie.

Other witnesses were two of Rankin’s neighbors who identified Jones in police photo arrays as a man they saw near Rankin’s home the day of the slaying. Cosgrove writes that both men had picked another person from a photo lineup in the days after the killing and that Jones was not selected until at least eight months later.

Jones is being held in Richland Correctional Institution. He is eligible for parole in 2018.