Tray has spent 36 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit.
In East Baltimore in 1985, Joshua O'Neal was murdered in an alleged drug-related shooting. 16-year-old Arlando "Tray" Jones III was arrested, charged, and convicted of the murder, and then sentenced to life + 20 years in prison. Tray does not deny his involvement in a drug organization, but he has always maintained - and continues to maintain - his innocence in the case of Joshua O'Neal.
Tray was not given a fair trial. The witnesses were coerced, the prosecutor’s conduct was unethical, and the facts simply don’t line up.
The Witnesses
The case had three key witnesses:
Brenda Branch: after testifying, Branch admitted that she was pressured by the state and didn’t actually see anything
Anthony Barnes: had a contradictory witness statement from Branch
Abraham Robinson: was prevented from testifying by the judge due to conflicts of interest and cooperation with the state
The Lawyers
The prosecutor in this case led the trial with a prejudicial agenda and consistently intertwined inadmissible evidence.
The defense attorney on the case claimed, “It was so messy because of Ruth Finch’s insistence to stick to her theory of the case. And the judge just really couldn’t control her. No matter what he said, she was gonna find some way to talk about Larry Lee. From the very beginning.”
The Facts
The witness testimonies contradicted one another on:
Time of the murder
Location and positioning of the incident
Individuals surrounding the scene
Color of the clothing
Responses following the murder
Volume of the incident
Barry Diamond, Tray’s Trial Attorney in the 1985 murder case
“She made it a very messy trial, it didn’t get reversed, and she got them convicted. Brenda Branch was a horrible witness. Just terrible. There wasn’t a single credible thing she said.”
“The criminal justice system failed Tray in multiple respects. The crime for which he was convicted, he did not commit that crime. He was framed in a very disgraceful display of criminal justice.”
Dr. Marc M. Howard, Georgetown University Professor of Government and Law, who taught Tray at the Jessup Correctional Institution.
Dr. Jeff Kukucka, expert in criminal psychology at Towson University