The Florida Supreme Court has reversed the denial of postconviction relief for Henry Lee Jones, directed that his conviction for the 2003 murder of Carlos Perez be set aside, and remanded for a new trial. The Court held that the State violated Brady v. Maryland. Two justices dissented.
The State had evidence that a woman’s DNA was on the victim and argued at trial that it got there by “secondary transfer” from an unwashed motel comforter. FDLE conversation logs showed that in 2012 the lab’s analyst and her supervisor told the lead detective that secondary transfer was “highly unlikely” and that the DNA was “more than likely a direct contact of some sort.” The State had the logs more than a year before trial and did not produce them. When the defense asked the detective in a deposition about conversations with FDLE, she responded that “the comforters were not being cleaned.”
The Court held the logs could have been used to impeach the State’s witnesses and attack the rigor of the investigation, that the State suppressed them, and that they were material. The Court acknowledged that the State’s theory “relied heavily—even primarily—on the similarity of this crime to the murders of Clarence and Lillian James,” but wrote that “so too did the State advance its secondary transfer theory as a central component of its case.” The Court could not say there was no reasonable probability of a different verdict.
Justice Barrios, joined by Justice Tanenbaum, dissented on materiality, writing that the secondary transfer theory “can hardly be considered central to the case” and that the other evidence against Jones was overwhelming.
Download the full opinion (PDF)
Citation: Jones v. State, No. SC2024-1135 (Fla. Oct. 15, 2026) (Couriel, C.J.; Labarga, Muñiz, Grosshans, and Francis, JJ., concurring; Barrios, J., dissenting, joined by Tanenbaum, J.). Not final until the time for rehearing expires.
More analysis may follow as additional information is received and reviewed. Sign up for alerts.