CINCINNATI — Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich announced Friday she has dismissed the 1995 murder case against Elwood Jones.
"This is the result of a months-long intensive review of trial paperwork, of court filing, of evidence," Pillich said.
Jones was convicted in 1996 for the murder of Rhoda Nathan, a woman found brutally beaten in her hotel room at the Embassy Suites in Blue Ash. He sat on death row for nearly three decades before Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Wende Cross in 2022 ruled that evidence withheld from Jones' defense attorneys was significant enough that Jones should have a new trial.
The Ohio 1st District Court of Appeals denied the prosecutor's office's request to appeal Cross's decision to grant Jones a new trial. The Ohio Supreme Court in December ruled the Court of Appeals to reconsider the request to challenge the decision.
WATCH: At Friday's press conference, Pillich said it took her months to make the decision
However, Pillich said in reviewing the information previously litigated, she found multiple issues, including a lack of forensic or physical evidence directly linking Jones to the murder, insufficient follow-ups on witness statements pointing to other possible suspects and failure to provide Jones' attorneys with a large amount of investigatory material before the trial.
Pillich also said modern-day medical testing "excludes" Jones as a suspect. She said blood tests done by the coroner showed Nathan had Hepatitis B, which is highly transmissible, at the time of her murder. Jones, she said, did not have Hepatitis B.
The prosecutor said she spoke with Nathan's children, who "expressed serious grief and frustration."
"My sense is that they feel that their mother did not get justice," she said.
Pillich said if police want to open up Nathan's case again, they can. However, her office will no longer be pursuing charges against Jones.
The prosecutor's office is also establishing a Conviction Integrity Unit that Pillich said will follow national best practices to research and review claims of wrongful conviction.
"Had such a unit existed years ago, this decision may have been reached much sooner," she said in a release about the decision.
