Bio

Arthur Lee Jones was born on July 26, 1938. Contemporary reports state that Jones had previously been incarcerated and first entered prison at age seventeen. By the early 1980s, Jones was living in the Mobile County area of Alabama. Some reports identified him as Arthur Lee Jones Jr. He also reportedly used the name Abdul Sibar Baaque. At the time of his capital case, he maintained that he was innocent and had been framed by police. He also stated that stealing and killing violated his Muslim faith.

Jones’s later capital conviction centered on the killing of a taxi driver in Mobile County, Alabama. Court records describe the victim as a taxi driver who picked Jones up at a taxi stand in the early morning hours of August 17, 1981. The driver was found dead a short time later.

Murder Story

In the early morning hours of August 17, 1981, Arthur Lee Jones hired a taxi at about 12:45 a.m. After the taxi left the taxi stand, a dispatcher attempted to contact the driver by radio, but the driver did not answer. Around thirty-five minutes later, the driver was found robbed and shot to death beside his taxi. His body was discovered in the street about eight-tenths of a mile from Jones’s home in Plateau, a residential area in North Mobile, Alabama.

The victim was later identified in execution reports as William Hosea Waymon, a cab driver from Mobile. One report stated that Waymon was shot four times in the head and neck at close range.

A witness known as “Shorty” Banks saw Jones hire the taxi. Banks later gave police a description of the man he had seen at the taxi stand. He reviewed several photographic arrays but did not identify anyone because Jones’s photograph was not included. Within three weeks of the murder, Banks viewed a lineup after Jones’s arrest and immediately identified Jones as the man who had hired the taxi.

Jones’s defense challenged the identification and presented an alibi theory. Two witnesses testified that Jones had been at a social club on the night of the murder. His attorneys also attempted to locate other possible alibi witnesses, but several could not be found or would not appear. One potential witness, Bobby Vaughn, reportedly confirmed that he had been with Jones earlier that night during arrangements for a marijuana sale, but not at the exact time of the murder. Vaughn refused to provide an address and did not testify at trial.

Jones was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982. His direct appeals in Alabama state court were unsuccessful, and later state post-conviction efforts also failed. In federal habeas proceedings, Jones raised issues involving the pretrial lineup, eyewitness-identification instructions, and claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected those claims and affirmed the denial of habeas relief on September 11, 1985.

After that ruling, Jones filed another habeas petition. He argued that his jury had been improperly shaped by the removal of jurors who expressed reservations about capital punishment. He also challenged certain prosecution arguments from the guilt phase of trial. On March 20, 1986, the Eleventh Circuit denied both a certificate of probable cause and a stay of execution.

The United States Supreme Court also denied a stay on March 20, 1986, clearing the way for the execution. Arthur Lee Jones was executed by electrocution at Holman Prison in Atmore, Alabama, shortly after midnight on March 21, 1986. He was pronounced dead at 12:13 a.m. He was 47 years old.