LITTLE ROCK — Saline County real estate developer and lawyer Aaron Jones is headed to prison after his conviction Tuesday on four federal charges accusing him of setting his Chenal Valley mansion on fire in 2008 to collect insurance money.
An all-woman jury deliberated for four hours before delivering the guilty verdicts on three counts of mail fraud and one count of using fire in commission of a felony (mail fraud).
The latter charge is punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of 10years in prison, to be served consecutively to whatever term is imposed on the underlying mail fraud charges. The mail-fraud sentence will be determined by U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller after a pre-sentence report is completed in 60 to 90 days.
Meanwhile, Miller released Jones on his own recognizance over prosecutors’ objections until a hearing at 10 a.m. Monday on whether pre-sentencing incarceration is mandatory for the fire conviction, as prosecutorscontend. Miller agreed to let defense attorney Tim Dudley submit a written brief on the matter before the judge decides.
Outside the courthouse just after 5 p.m., Jones, accompanied by his wife, Abby, and Dudley, walked past reporters without commenting.
U.S. Attorney Jane Duke, joined by Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Julie Peters,who prosecuted the case with Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Dan Stripling, called the case a “very serious” one with implications for many.
Arson, Duke said, “drives up the cost of insurance for all consumers.”
But “more importantly than increasing our rates,” Duke said, “it is subjecting our first responders to risk of injury and death.”
Asked about Jones’ conviction in light of the faltering real estate market and rocky economy, Duke also told reporters, “I think he’s reflective of people who have lived beyond their means and become accustomed to playing their margin.”
Earlier Tuesday, in closing arguments, Dudley raised what spectators called the “pee in your pants defense” as one of his arguments to persuade jurors that reasonable doubt existed to preventguilty verdicts.
Standing directly in front of the jury box, Dudley donned a plastic glove and held up a pair of soiled white cotton briefs that Jones wore at the time of the fire.
“You can see that he fouled himself that night,” Dudley said. “If Aaron Jones set that fire himself, why would he pee in his pants? You pee in your pants because you’re scared to death.”
In his rebuttal remarks, Stripling considered Dudley’s hypothesis.
Maybe, he said, Jones urinated on himself because “you just committed a felony by burning your house down, and you’ve got neighbors staring at your knees and not seeing things, and it suddenly dawns on you, ‘My story’s not selling.’ That would be a good reason to pee in your pants.”
Stripling was referring to skepticism expressed by some of Jones’ neighbors after he showed up on one neighbor’s doorstep in the middle of the night with his ankles duct-taped together, saying he had just hopped and crawled there from his house after intruders in his house tied him up, set his house on fire and fled.
Neighbors noted that his white T-shirt was clean and that he didn’t have grass marks or dirt on his knees.
While prosecutors presented evidence that Jones was having serious cash-flow problems in the weeks before the fire, Dudley presented testimony that those were temporary problems that Jones could easily resolve, and that he still had a net worth of more than $4 million.
The house at 43 Chenal Circle had been on the market for more than a year with no prospective buyers, and a balloon payment of more than $300,000 had come due in early May, but was extended for another year at the last minute, at a cost to Jones of $50,000. Meanwhile, the Joneses were trying unsuccessfully to sell their million-dollar vacation home in Florida, but the value of real estate there was dropping drastically.
Prosecutors say Jones’ wealth was all tied to the real estate market, which was in trouble, and “he saw the writing on the wall” and burned his house to escape a mountain of debt.
Stripling told jurors that for Jones, “deception was a way of life,” as evidenced by such maneuvers as taking out a second mortgage on his Chenal home without telling his banker, while trying to secure a third mortgage.
“People who don’t have financial problems don’t have to live their lives that way,” Stripling said.
Stripling also noted that Jones listed the primary mortgage holder, Countrywide Financial, as a “loss payee” on his homeowner’s insurance policy, guaranteeing that whatever happened to the house, the insurance company would pay that company first - as it did, although it didn’t reimburse the Joneses for the burned contents.
Peters reminded jurors of testimony from an arson expert that the fire originated in the master bedroom near a glass door to the patio, through which Jones said he escaped after the intruders left.
Jones “must have walked through fire” if his story is to be believed, Peters said.
Dudley criticized investigators for ignoring a neighbor’s report of hearing a car speed away from the area shortly before the fire was reported about 1:30 a.m. May 30, 2008, while Jones’ family was at their Florida vacation home.
He also criticized the investigation by local, state and federal authorities as “sloppy,” telling the jurors that “there’s something mighty funny going on” and that the prosecution’s case wasn’t “on the up and up.”
After the verdict, Duke praised the work of the FBI, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Little Rock Fire Department and the state Crime Laboratory, as well as her deputies who prosecuted the case.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 09/29/2010