Lexington County man who killed his 5 kids set to appeal sentence in SC Supreme Court
A Lexington County man who was convicted of murdering his five children in a 2014 case that shocked the state and nation is set to appeal his death sentence before the South Carolina Supreme Court.
Timothy Ray Jones, Jr. was convicted in 2019 of murder in the deaths of his five children in August 2014. A Lexington County jury unanimously said he should be sentenced to death in the case. Judge Eugene Griffith formally handed down the death sentence on Nov. 30, 2019.
Now a state Supreme Court roster of cases shows that Jones is set to make a direct appeal of his conviction and sentence. The matter is set to be heard at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday in the state’s highest court.
The court roster said Jones, 39, is “alleging the trial court erred by qualifying and disqualifying certain jurors, refusing to instruct the jury on the consequences of a not guilty by reason of insanity verdict, failing to suppress evidence obtained at a safety checkpoint, excluding relevant mitigating evidence during sentencing, and admitting autopsy photographs of the victims.”
State records show Jones is jailed at Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia.
Back in 2019, more than 60 witnesses testified at a three-week trial of Jones. The details of the crime in which five young children — Merah, 8; Elias, 7; Nahtahn, 6; Gabriel, 2; and Abigail Elaine, 1 — died at their Red Bank home were grisly.
Jones claimed in a confession played in court that Nahtahn was the first to die after he forced the child to perform rigorous exercises as punishment on Aug. 28, 2014.
After what Jones claimed was the boy’s accidental death, he thought his only choice was to kill the others, who were in their beds, Jones claimed. He then went from child-to-child, methodically choking each one to death, using a belt on the two smallest because their necks were too small to get his hands around.
Autopsies confirmed the four of the children were strangled to death while an autopsy of Nahtahn was inconclusive.
After the murders, Jones put the children’s bodies in garbage bags, drove them away and dumped them off a rural Alabama logging road.
This story was originally published November 6, 2021 at 8:40 AM.
