LITTLE ROCK — Saline County developer and attorney Aaron Jones has been found guilty on all charges related to setting his Chenal Valley mansion ablaze and then trying to claim the insurance money.
Jones was convicted Tuesday of three counts of mail fraud and one count of using fire to commit mail fraud in the May 30, 2008 fire, which gutted the $1.6 million home while Jones' wife, children and two dogs were staying at the family's Florida beach house. The jury of 12 women came back with the verdict just before 5:10 p.m.
Jones showed no emotion when the verdict was read and didn't answer questions as he left the courthouse with his wife, Abby. Dudley also declined to comment.
Prosecutor Julie Peters requested Jones be taken into custody under mandatory detention rules for "crimes of violence." However, Jones was allowed to remain free after his defense attorney, Tim Dudley, said he had not yet researched the prosecution's request.
U.S. District Judge Brian Miller set a hearing for 10 a.m. Monday to determine if Jones will be incarcerated pending sentencing, which typically occurs 60 to 90 days after the trial ends.
Jones was indicted on the counts after submitting insurance claims covering the damage and lost property. He maintained his innocence and said the fire was set by armed intruders who broke in, bound him in duct tape, doused the home in diesel fuel and then lit it.
Prosecutors said Jones set the fire and tried to make it look like someone else did it in a scheme to get the insurance money.
U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas Jane Duke said the crime puts first responders, like firefighters, in danger and also increases insurance rates for others.
"It is a crime we take very seriously," she said, standing outside the courthouse with Peters shortly after the trial adjourned.
The guilty verdicts were read after about four hours of deliberations and after more than two hours of closing arguments in which prosecutors and Dudley painted very different pictures of what happened.
Dudley tried to pick away at the prosecution's case, calling the investigation botched, challenging the testimony of a forensic analysis who thought Jones had poor liquidity and even presenting Jones' urine-soaked underwear as evidence why the crime was the work of someone else.
Duke called challenging the police work a "diversionary tactic."
"When you have little to go on, the typical tactic is to attack the investigating agency," she said.
As for the urine-soaked underwear, the jury apparently didn't buy Dudley's assertion that Jones would not have been scared enough to urinate in them if he had set the fire himself.
Duke smiled as she answered a question about it after the trial had ended.
"I've never heard that one," she said. "That was a new one."
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