South Carolina man who was found guilty for murdering his five children in 2014 to appeal his death sentence

Timothy Ray Jones Jr. was found guilty and sentenced to death for killing his five minor children in an incident that took place in 2014.

He was found guilty and sentenced in 2019 after originally pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, but today he is ready to challenge his death sentence.

Jones’s children- Mera, 8, Elias, 7, Nahtahn, 6, Gabriel, 2, and Abigail, 1, were killed “by means of strangulation and/or other violent means or instruments” in 2014. The bodies of his children were found in garbage bags in Alabama.

When he initially pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in his initial court process, his defense stated that he was schizophrenic, but they were not able to provide documented diagnosis at the time of his crimes.

Excluding relevant mitigating evidence during sentencing, and refusing to instruct the jury on the consequences of a not guilty by reason of insanity verdict will be mentioned in his appeal.

Jones, Jr. will be challenging his conviction alleging certain jurors should have been qualified or disqualified from the case. He never took the stand in his own defense.