The murder of Cindy Jones, a young woman, stunned the community in Centervale. Five years ago, a young woman was found strangled to death in her car outside a grocery store in Centervale. For the past five years, the Centervale Police Department (CPD) has worked tirelessly to develop leads toward the identification of a suspect. Last year, the CPD officials got a break when the State Crime Lab notified the lead detective that the DNA sample recovered from the purse strap found around Jones’s neck indicated the involvement of Jason Rivers.
The District Attorney’s (DA’s) office has never had a case like this before. Jones came from an honorable family in the community and Rivers is a mentally challenged, middle-aged man who lives with his father far from the grocery store. Rivers had been arrested more than twenty-five times before the death of Jones. Centervale detectives have surmised that Rivers happened to be in the area of the grocery store where he supposedly encountered Jones.
Upon arrest, Rivers was found to be incompetent to proceed to trial and a judge remanded him to a state custody. Recently, doctors at the State Mental Health Hospital sent a notice that Rivers was no longer suffering from the effects of substance abuse and is competent to stand trial. A judge ruled in accordance with the doctors and the case was put on the docket for trial.
During jury selection, the voir dire consisted of questions about how potential jurors felt about law enforcement-related TV shows. During the presentation of the case, the State introduced the jury to the DNA evidence and other important physical evidence in the case. Rivers did not take the stand and the defense rested on the claim that Rivers’s DNA got on the purse strap when he accidently bumped into Jones at the checkout lane of the grocery store while she was putting groceries into her grocery cart.
The defense also attacked the CPD because a former detective who worked on the Jones crime scene was convicted of domestic violence and assault on a female since the murder.
The defense also called into question the credibility and integrity of the former detective because he was alleged to have been romantically interested in Jones before her death. In fact, Jones had spoken with a CPD official, off the record, about the harassing phone calls she received from the former detective, although nothing was done by the department to stop the calls.
Here Is What You Need to Do . . .
You are an intern working in the DA’s office. The DA has asked you to help him assemble information about current trends in criminal justice that relate to the Jones murder case.
Using in-text citations to cite all sources that are linked to a corresponding reference on a separate page of the report, compose a 5- to 6-page report using APA format, addressing the following: