Accused Child Killer Goes Free, Mother/Suspect Will Never Be Charged In Killing

Accused child killer Patrick Cody McCormick will plead ‘no contest’ to involuntary manslaughter and leave the Elko County Court house a free man on January 7th, sources revealed this week.

Originally tried and convicted for the 1995 first degree murder of toddler year Jacob Jones, McCormick was serving a 20 years to life sentence when the Nevada Supreme court overturned his conviction last year.

He was released from prison and immediately re-charged with the crime to which he pled “not guilty” in March of this year.

McCormick’s change of plea hearing is set for January 7th.

The plea bargain can be likened to a compromise between a man who spent 16 years in prison for a crime he insisted he never committed and a District Attorney who facing a public outcry was loathe to drop charges completely.

click for plea bargain

McCORMICK plea agt proffer

And like all compromises no one is completely happy with the deal.

McCormick who has long maintained that Nevada had imprisoned an ‘innocent’ man will not contest the charge he is indeed a child killer albeit an accidental one.

By agreeing to the deal, District Attorney Marc Torvinen, all but agreed that McCormick did not receive a fair trial and may have been convicted of a crime he did not commit. The key phrase in that sentence however is the ‘all but’. While accepting the no contest plea may have been painful to the Elko District Attorney he also saved the state what could have been millions of dollars in damages McCormick might have sought should the case had gone to trial a second time and he would have been found ‘not guilty’. And a not guilty verdict was all but assured:

“I have consulted with a number of my colleagues and all in agreement that if we proceeded to trial at this point on the Murder charges it is a near certainty that Mr. McCormick would be acquitted,” Torvinen wrote in a letter to Jacob’s father, Ben Jones earlier this week. “I have been doing this for over 30 years; I have litigated many, many murder cases; and the unfortunate reality of this case is that it has been fatally compromised by the failure to conduct some testing that was available at the time of Jacob’s death; this testing should have been done; it was not done; and it cannot be done now.”

click for DA letter to Ben Jones

Torvinen letter -Medical experts

The crux of Torvinen’s decision for the plea bargain is directly tied to the Nevada supreme overturning of the original conviction. The court ruled McCormick deserved a new trial not because of any misconduct from the prosecution but rather because of the incompetence of McCormick’s original attorney Ron Yengich of Salt Lake City.

The court ruled however that Yengich made a crucial error that might have sent an innocent man to prison for 15 years.

Part of the Supreme Court ruling:

“… Appellant argues that counsel was ineffective for failing to investigate whether the victim died from anaphylactic shock due to an  allergic reaction to penicillin. The record before this court indicates that counsel was deficient and that appellant was pre-judiced by that deficiency. 

Counsel testified that he knew the emergency room physician could not 

rule out a penicillin allergy as a cause of death; that he could not recall 

discussing it with Dr. S. Dunton, the medical expert with whom he briefly 

consulted; and that he would have presented expert testimony that the 

victim died of anaphylactic shock had he had such an expert opinion. 

Counsel provided no reason for why he did not investigate this possible 

defense. It was thus objectively unreasonable for trial counsel to have 

abandoned the potential defense without first investigating it. Strickland,  

466 U.S. at 690-91. 

Moreover, appellant has demonstrated a reasonable 

probability of a different outcome had counsel presented expert testimony 

regarding a penicillin allergy. The testimony of two key witnesses provided the only evidence at trial that appellant fatally abused the 

victim.

One of those key witnesses was Jacob Jones’ mother, Jennifer, who McCormick and his family insist should have been standing trial instead.

“If Patrick Cody McCormick is so blatantly innocent why did the DA prosecute him and not Jennifer back in 1996?  Jennifer knew as soon as Jacob died that either her or Cody was going to prison.  So while Cody and others waited for the medical facts, Jennifer convinced the DA that she was in an abusive relationship and to prosecute Cody not her. She had the child’s body cremated the minute that the County Pathologist finished the autopsy so that a second Pathologist could not examine the body.  She convinced herself, her family and others that it must have been Cody, ”  wrote Cody McCormick’s brother Jason earlier this year.  “The County Pathologist, who testified in the evidentiary hearing, stated that the events leading to Jacob’s death happened while Cody was at work the night before Jacob’s death.  In the trial the Pathologist changed her testimony, stating that she could pinpoint the time of the events to the 10 minute interval when Cody was alone with the child.  When asked why she changed her medical opinion she said she recently attended a conference and learned new information.  When asked to provide medical studies or journals to support the opinion she could not.  The Jury was forced by the Jury Instructions and lack of alternative medical opinion to find Cody guilty of first degree murder.  That is how a blatantly innocent person goes to prison.”

That contention is at least partially supported by the plea agreement where Jennifer Jones admission to striking her son and feeding him antibiotics is detailed. (Plea agreement is published on page 4)

Jones strongly denied those allegations in a letter earlier this year:

“I am the mother of Jacob Jones and feel everyone should know the kind of person Mr. McCormick truly is. If I am typical trailer trash than Mr. McCormick was the head trailer trash that man hit a child who was only fourteen months old not did he hit him till he stopped crying he shook him till his brain stem was removed from the brain does that sound like a upstanding citizen to you not only did he do that but then after my son was declared legally (sic) dead he held my hand and told me he had done nothing wrong he went to my sons funereal sat by my side and let me believe he did nothing wrong. I admit my mistake in staying in the abusive relationship (sic) he should take responsibility (sic) for what he did Which is kill an innocent child for no other than his crying was making him angry when I left the house that morning my son was alive and walking around yes I gave him the medication but it was not an adult dose and I certainly did not cause any of the bruising that was found. Before his attorney says things about people maybe he should get the whole story and know who he is talking about including the man he is representing seems to me he would want to know what kind a man he truly (sic) is aside from abusing me my older son and Jacob he also abused his own five children. Please remember that the person who’s life was taken is not given a chance to speak and tell you about his death we need to be that voice and make sure this man never hurts anybody ever again if that means leaving him in prison than lets do that please. “

Jennifer Jones will never stand trail, even if the District Attorney was inclined to press charges. She was given immunity  17 years ago for her testimony at McCormick’s original trial.