$2.5 Million Verdict for Daughter of Unarmed Howard Student Prince Jones, Killed by Undercover Officer
A Prince George's County jury found an undercover officer liable for fatally shooting Prince Jones, an unarmed Howard University student stopped in a case of mistaken identity, and awarded his young daughter $2.5 million.
What happened
Prince Carmen Jones Jr. was 25 years old, a Howard University student and personal trainer who was preparing to enter the Navy and had a baby daughter. On the night of September 1, 2000, an undercover Prince George's County narcotics officer, Corporal Carlton Jones (no relation), was searching for a suspect who had stolen a police handgun. He fixed on the wrong man.
The officer, in plain clothes and driving an unmarked car, followed Prince Jones for roughly 15 miles, out of Maryland and into Fairfax County, Virginia, stopping him near his fiancee's home. The officer said he identified himself as police, that Jones then rammed his vehicle, and that he fired in self-defense. He fired 16 shots. Several struck Prince Jones, five of them in the back. Jones was unarmed. Fairfax County prosecutors filed no criminal charges, citing mistaken identity.
The family brought a wrongful-death suit in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County. Patrick Malone, with co-counsel Terrell N. Roberts III, represented Prince Jones's young daughter and his father. Before the case could be tried, it turned on a fight over which state's law applied. In 2003 the Maryland Court of Appeals cleared the way for the suit to go forward in Maryland and let Prince Jones's young daughter pursue a wrongful-death claim, holding that Maryland law governed who could bring the action.
At trial the firm called witnesses who testified that the Jeep was not moving when the officer opened fire, contradicting the account that Jones had used his vehicle as a weapon. In January 2006 the jury found that Corporal Jones was negligent, that he used excessive force, and that he could not reasonably have believed his conduct was lawful. The jurors awarded $3.7 million in all: $2.5 million to the man's young daughter, the firm's client, $1 million to his mother, who was separately represented, and $200,000 to his father.
The award did not survive intact. Because Virginia law governed the damages and does not permit the parents of an adult child to recover, the trial judge struck the $1 million awarded to the mother and the $200,000 awarded to the father. The $2.5 million for the daughter remained, and the case ultimately resolved for that amount.
The killing later reached a wide audience when writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who knew Jones from Howard, wrote about him in his 2015 book "Between the World and Me."
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Washington Post: Officer Liable in Student's Killing; Jurors Award $3.7 Million·Archived copy
- 2.Capital News Service (University of Maryland): Court Rules Prince Jones' Family May Sue for Wrongful Death·Archived copy
- 3.FindLaw: Jones v. Prince George's County (Md. 2003)
- 4.Court of Appeals of Maryland, Jones v. Prince George's County, 378 Md. 98 (2003): counsel for appellants include Patrick Malone of Stein, Mitchell & Mezines
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