Hancock County Prosecutor Won’t Seek Indictment In Facebook Case
Prosecutors are asking a judge to dismiss all charges against military veteran and Facebook provocateur David Jones.
The request is in response to a motion to dismiss filed by Jones’ attorney that asserted Jones’ Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial.
“While the state disagrees that it has violated the defendant’s right to a speedy trial, it does agree that this matter should be dismissed without prejudice,” Marshall County Assistant Prosecutor Adam E. Barney said in his response.
Barney, appointed special prosecutor in the case, went on to say the state does not intend to indict Jones, 48, of New Cumberland.
“I reviewed the case as a whole, and it was just a case that it was a proper exercise of my prosecutorial discretion to not indict,” he said, declining to elaborate.
Under the West Virginia Rules of Criminal Procedure, Circuit Judge Jason Cuomo can grant the motion to dismiss or dismiss the case on his own order.
Since Jones was charged with two felony counts of retaliation a year ago, the Hancock County grand jury has met three times without indicting him. Jones’ case was bound over to Hancock County Circuit Court after a visiting magistrate found there was probable cause that a crime had been committed.
“We think it’s great news,” said Wheeling attorney Philip Sbrolla. “We see it as an exoneration. We never believed there was a basis to file the charges in the first place.”
Jones was charged with retaliation in connection with Facebook posts he wrote in 2014 about then-Delegate Randy Swartzmiller and then-Circuit Judge Martin Gaughan. The charges were filed in July 2015, about a year later, after Hancock County authorities investigated other Facebook comments by Jones.
Jones was arrested on June 26, 2015, and spent 19 days in the Northern Regional Jail in Moundsville before his bond was reduced. He originally was charged with making terrorist threats, but those charges were dropped and refiled as retaliation in connection with a July 7, 2014, post in which Jones wrote that heroin users should go to Gaughan’s home, “take what you want, trash the place and terrorize HIS family. He is okay with it” and an Aug. 24, 2014, post in which Jones wrote “criminals and crackheads” should go to Swartzmiller’s home and “do everything you have done to terrorize other citizens of Hancock County. Help yourself to his stuff. Obviously he does not care.”
Jones also included a Google Maps photo and the address of Swartzmiller’s house. Sbrolla said the comments were meant as “political hyperbole” and protected by the First Amendment.
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