Kentucky man freed from prison by former governor to plead guilty on federal charge
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A Western Kentucky man charged in federal court after having his state sex-crime sentence wiped away by a former governor plans to plead guilty.
Dayton R. Jones, 27, of Hopkinsville is charged in federal court with production of child pornography. He allegedly took part in a sexual assault on an unconscious teenage boy, made a video of the abuse and posted it to social media.
Jones is scheduled for a hearing on Oct. 20 to change his plea to guilty, according to the court docket.
The docket does not include information on the charge on which Jones will plead. His attorney did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Jones pleaded guilty in state court in 2016 to first-degree sodomy, first-degree wanton endangerment and distributing material portraying a sexual performance by a minor.
Jones was at a party in October 2014 where underage people were drinking. After one 15-year-old boy passed out, Jones and others allegedly took turns sodomizing him with a 12-inch sex toy, according to a sworn statement by Renee Chouinard, a special agent with the FBI.
Jones was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
In December 2019, however, then-Gov. Matt Bevin commuted Jones’ sentence to time served, freeing him after three years.
The decision was among hundreds of pardons and commutations Bevin, a Republican, issued in his final days in office, sparking an outcry from family members of crime victims, prosecutors and elected officials from both political parties.
Bevin has said there was zero evidence of Jones’ guilt, though others involved in the crime implicated Jones and the prosecutor strongly disagreed the evidence was lacking.
Federal authorities picked up a case on Jones after the commutation and a federal grand jury indicted him in June 2020 on one count of using a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction.
The charge carries a minimum 15-year prison sentence. The court docket did not include information on whether that is the charge to which Jones plans to plead guilty.
Jones can be prosecuted on the charge in federal court, even though it arises from the same alleged crime that has been resolved in state court, because it is a different charge.
Jones’ case is not the only one in which federal authorities have pursued a charge against someone Bevin let out of prison.
A jury in federal court convicted Patrick Baker last month on a charge of murdering a drug dealer in Knox County in 2014 while trying to rob him of pain pills and cash.
Baker, 43, had been convicted in state court in 2017 of reckless homicide in the death of Donald Mills and was sentenced to 19 years in prison.
The Kentucky Court of Appeals upheld Baker’s conviction, saying the evidence against him was overwhelming, but Bevin pardoned him in December 2019.
That has been one of the more controversial pardons because members of Baker’s family had held a political fundraiser for Bevin in 2018.
Federal authorities have looked into the fundraiser.
Baker is scheduled to be sentenced in December. He faces up to life in prison.
This story was originally published September 14, 2021 at 2:20 PM.
