Robert Jones released twenty three years after being wrongly convicted of murder of a Middleton woman

Robert Jones, a man who was wrongly jailed for the murder of Middleton woman Julie Stott in 1992, has been released from prison twenty three years after he was convicted.

Julie Stott was murdered during a failed robbery whilst holidaying in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was out walking with her fiancé in the French Quarter of the city when she was shot and killed.

Mr Jones, now 42, was jailed when he was 19-years-old for the murder of Julie despite another man, Lester Jones, already being convicted of the crime. At the time Mr Jones was also convicted of various other crimes, including rape and robbery.

Even though he was jailed for the numerous crimes, which took place at the same time as Julie’s murder, evidence linked Lester Jones to all of the other crimes that Mr Jones had been accused of committing.

It has since emerged that prosecutors withheld crucial evidence in the trial of Mr Jones and even though a court ruled in June 2015 that he had not been given a fair trial, he remained in prison.

In October 2015, the detective who investigated the murder and the judge from the original trial said that they believed Mr Jones’ conviction had been a miscarriage of justice.

He has now been released from prison on bail, pending a retrial after what a judge called a “disturbing testimony from a lead detective”.

The Innocence Project New Orleans, which now represents Mr Jones, has stated that his convictions for rape and robbery also need to be reviewed. Defence lawyers say that Mr Jones was only picked out of a line up after his name and image were publicised across the globe in connection with Ms Stott’s death.