Man reconvicted in woman’s California slaying after ‘tainted’ first trial, officials say
Nearly four decades after a 26-year-old woman was kidnapped from a mall, raped and killed, a man has been convicted for the second time, California prosecutors say.
A jury found Ronald Anthony Jones, whose previous conviction had been reversed, guilty of first-degree murder with four special circumstances and an enhancement of principal armed with a gun in the death of Lois Haro, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in an Oct. 7 news release.
On the day of her death on Oct. 18, 1988, Haro was shopping for gifts for a baby shower at Plaza Pasadena, according to the legal website FindLaw.
As she walked to her parked car, Jones and another man, George Marvin Trone, followed her, prosecutors said.
“At gunpoint, they forced her into her car, carjacked and abducted her,” prosecutors said.
The pair are accused of each sexually assaulting her before driving her “to a remote area in Pasadena, where they shot and killed her,” according to prosecutors.
Haro, who was found “lying in the dirt,” died en route to the hospital, Pasadena Now reported.
Trone, who “was found guilty of robbing, sexually assaulting and murdering Lois Haro,” was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 1992, prosecutors said.
Jones was convicted of multiple charges, including murder, and sentenced to death in 1991, prosecutors said.
Haro’s husband, Tony Haro, told the Los Angeles Times that his wife’s death “turned my life upside down.”
“The trials of Jones and Trone in the 1990s were just excruciating. It was devastating. It was hard to function,” Tony Haro told the newspaper.
Then, three decades after Jones’ conviction, the United States District Court for the Central District of California reversed Jones’ conviction, citing a “Wheeler–Batson error, which occurs during jury selection in a trial and involves the improper exclusion of potential jurors based on race, ethnicity, or other protected characteristics,” prosecutors said.
In a petition to reverse Jones’ conviction, his defense argued that his constitutional rights had been violated when the prosecution dismissed “all four prospective jurors who were or appeared to be Black,” and “Jones is Black,” City News Service reported.
U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton concluded Jones’ initial trial was “incurably tainted by race-based discrimination” and ruled that he was entitled to a new trial, the outlet reported.
Last year, DNA from Haro’s clothing was tested and confirmed to be Jones’, prosecutors said.
Jones pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including kidnapping for robbery, second-degree robbery and forcible rape, prosecutors said.
At his new trial, Jones’ defense attorney, Ilya Alekseyeff, said that while there was “‘no dispute’ that his client is guilty of murder,” he was not the one who pulled the trigger, City News Service reported.
While the jury found Jones guilty of first-degree murder with four special circumstances, “it could not agree on whether he was the one who shot Lois Haro, unlike in his first trial,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
“Today, justice has finally been served for Lois Haro and her family,” District Attorney George Gascón said in the release. “This verdict is a crucial step in bringing closure to a case that has weighed heavily on the hearts of her loved ones and our community for more than three decades.”
Jones will be sentenced on Oct. 22 and is facing a “mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole,” prosecutors said.
“I’m very relieved,” Tony Haro told the Los Angeles Times, “and hope I never have go through this again in my lifetime.”
