Marquise Jones gets court date

FREMONT — A judge ordered a hearing be scheduled for an inmate requesting early release in a high-profile 2007 robbery investigated by former Sandusky County Sheriff Kyle Overmyer. Judge Jeremiah Ray on April 19 instructed the adult probation department to make arrangements to transport Marquise Jones, 30, from the Marion Correctional Facility to the county courthouse in Fremont for the hearing. A hearing date has not yet been entered on the court docket.The decision to have a hearing happened a day before the Register published a two-day series, "Growing up Marquise" (April 20-22). The series detailed information from the police investigation, the court case file and transcripts from Marquise Jones' October 2008 aggravated burglary/assault trial. The Register made public records requests for the documents from the sheriff, Fremont police, the court and the clerk of courts offices, all of which were honored.The Register series also provided information about racial disparities in prison populations and sentencing reform efforts across the state and nation. Jones was 18 when he was convicted on 17 counts, including multiple aggravated robbery and assault charges. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison. He is representing himself requesting a hearing and applying for early release. He previously was represented by several attorneys in succession, however, since his convictions, including more recently by Sandusky attorney Geoff Oglesby, who died in February.Jones' wife, Laura Jones, spoke with the Register for its series, but Marquise Jones declined to comment on his case.Four women and four men were indicted shortly after the East State Street robbery, according to the records. All but three of them took plea deals that resulted in probation. The woman who organized the robbery was convicted at trial but her conviction was later overturned and she was released from prison about five years ago. Marquise Jones was never positively identified as one of three or four men who went inside the home and robbed five men at gunpoint, pistol whipping the victims and leaving with their money and valuables. All of the robbers wore ski masks and were armed with handguns, according to victims who testified at Marquise's trial.Detective Overmyer did not testify. The only officer who did was the responding deputy the night the robbery occurred. The other witnesses at trial were alleged co-conspirators.One of the co-conspirators testified she recognized Marquise Jones "by his shape." That same witness admitted to lying to police and acknowledged she felt pressured by Overmyer, a sheriff's detective at that time, to be a prosecution witness. Another co-conspirator testified at trial he also was threatened and pressured. Another witness — the woman who set up the men to be robbed — also contends she was pressured and threatened by Overmyer to give false testimony. She filed a sworn affidavit with the court in 2016 — after Overmyer was indicted on felony theft and drug charges — refuting what she told police happened. She stated she came forward at that time since she no longer feared retaliation from Overmyer because he'd been indicted.Police told the women involved who were mothers they would take away their children if they refused to testify and say Marquise Jones was inside the home when the men were robbed, according to one woman familiar with the investigation.Overmyer's downfall came eight years after Jones was convicted and sent to prison.Former Sandusky County sheriff Kyle Overmyer at his sentencing hearing in December 2016. A judge told Overmyer, who was appointed sheriff in 2008, he betrayed the trust of the people and disgraced law enforcement when she sentenced him to four years in prison in December 2016, after he admitted he stole money from the sheriff's office and drugs from the evidence room.Overmyer also has asked for early release, which is opposed by the special prosecutor and was denied previously by the court. He is an inmate in protective custody at the Allen Correctional Facility in Lima. His former top detective and best friend — Sean O'Connell — also is a state prison inmate in protective custody, having been convicted in 2017 of falsifying evidence in a murder investigation.The prosecution in Marquise Jones' case has not taken any position reference to his request for early release.Judge Ray was elected in November 2018, defeating incumbent Judge John Hart. Hart had approved a court entry last year to release Jones, but he never signed the order. Ray, earlier this year, declined a request from Jones for hearing. He decided April 19 to grant the request to hear his application for early release.