At about 3 a.m., on August 24, 1985, three women in their 20s left a club in downtown Topeka, Kansas, and walked to a nearby parking lot on Kansas Avenue to drive home. Two of the women, C.H. and C.S. got into one car and the other, M.M., got into another. A Black man with a knife came up to the car with C.H. and C.S. He ordered C.S. to get out and then got in. The man ordered C.H. to drive to a deserted area nearby, where he raped her.
After the man got out of the car, C.H. drove to the police station where she found her two friends had already reported her abduction. C.H. was taken to the hospital where a rape kit was taken.
Later that evening, C.S. and M.M. returned to the club. As they were arriving, they saw 23-year-old Joe Jones walking south on Kansas Avenue and believed he was the perpetrator. At about the same time, a police officer who had obtained the description of the attacker from C.H. happened to come along and stopped Jones.
At that point, M.M. and C.S. stepped up and both identified him on the street as the man who abducted C.H. Jones was arrested and taken to the police station.
Initially, C.H. did not identify Jones from a photographic lineup. However, when she viewed a live lineup, she identified Jones as her attacker.
Jones was charged with rape, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated assault.
Jones went to trial in February 1986 in Shawnee County District Court. By that time, evidence showed that Jones was a member at the same club where the women had been on the night of the crime and that he had been present in the club that night.
The victim identified him as did her two friends. The prosecution also introduced into evidence a pair of jeans recovered from Jones’s house that C.H. said resembled jeans worn by her attacker.
The trial judge barred the defense from presenting evidence that Jones was gay. A market employee testified that at the time of the crime, Jones was in his store and was wearing different clothing than the clothing that C.H. said her attacker wore.
On February 13, 1986, the jury convicted Jones on all charges, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
In 1986 and 1987, David Gottlieb, a University of Kansas professor of law, was on sabbatical and began representing Jones while working for the Office of the Appellate Defender. Gottlieb believed Jones’s alibi was credible and continued to represent Jones when he returned from his sabbatical.
As part of a motion for a new trial, Gottlieb arranged for Lawrence S. Wrightsman Jr., a University of Kansas professor of psychology, to submit an affidavit detailing reasons why the three women’s identifications were unreliable. The motion also raised the possibility of an alternate suspect, Joel Russell, who had been convicted of similar sexual assaults.
The prosecution presented evidence that Russell had denied involvement in the crime, that Russell’s photograph had been included in the initial photographic lineup, and that C.H. had not identified him.
The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed the convictions in February 1987. Another motion for a new trial argued that Jones had not received a fair trial when his attorney was not allowed to present evidence of Jones’s sexual orientation. That motion was denied in 1989.
In 1991, Gottlieb arranged for the physical evidence to be sent to Cellmark Diagnostics, a DNA laboratory in Germantown, Maryland. Money to pay for the testing came from a recent unrestricted bequest to the University of Kansas School of Law..
Cellmark’s testing was inconclusive because the amount of evidence was so small.
Cellmark then sent the evidence to Forensic Science Associates, a California DNA laboratory run by Dr. Edward Blake that had more sophisticated equipment. In April 1992, Blake reported that Jones was excluded as the source of the semen found on C.H.’s clothing.
Gottlieb then enlisted the help of the Kansas Defender Project which allowed KU law students to help on cases.
A petition for a new trial based on the DNA test results was filed in December 1992. On July 17, 1992, Shawnee County District Judge Franklin Theis vacated Jones’s convictions. The prosecution dismissed the case, and Jones was released.
In 1993, the Kansas legislature approved a $350,000 award of compensation for Jones.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 02-19-2026
