(From The Village Voice)
On August 25, Lonnie Jones, 42, came home from fertilizing and aerating lawns for the retirees in the sleepy Florida coastal town where he's hiding out. There was a call from his lawyer waiting for him.
Jones learned that Court of Claims Judge S. Michael Nadel had ruled that the State of New York must pay him $1,798,691 for the five and a half years he spent locked up in the Elmira, Clinton, and Downstate correctional facilities for a crime he did not commit.
Since his release from prison in 2007, Jones has been up to New York City only twice: Once, he flew up for a few hours to sort out a revoked driver's license, and then he returned a year ago to testify in his lawsuit against the State. But after the few days that the trial lasted, Jones immediately boarded a flight back to Florida.
Jones avoids New York—where he was born and raised, and where his mother and a daughter still live—because of a man named Willie Hayward, who was in his mid-thirties when he was gunned down on July 2, 2001, at the Sea Park housing complex in Coney Island. Hayward had been the leader of the Brooklyn chapter of the Sex Money Murder Bloods gang. After Jones was arrested for the murder, the gang put a $20,000 contract on his head.
Lawyers from one of the city's top-tier law firms, working for free, eventually helped Jones prove his innocence and then win nearly $2 million, the third highest judgment for wrongful imprisonment in New York State history.
But the Bloods don't care. The head of Lonnie Jones is still worth $20,000 in Coney Island. Which is why, after serving five and a half years for a murder he didn't commit, Jones is still not truly free, as he lives and works and lays low in Florida.
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