Brothers charged in fatal 2020 fight over kids playing basketball are out of jail. How?
The charges against two brothers accused in a fatal confrontation over kids playing street basketball in a north Columbus neighborhood have changed three times since the February 2020 altercation.
Now they could change again, as District Attorney Mark Jones has said he will take the case back to a Muscogee County grand jury to seek another indictment.
Since 62-year-old Danny Jones died paralyzed in intensive care on Feb. 21, 2020, Darnel Lamar Piett has been charged with aggravated assault, and then murder, and most recently involuntary manslaughter.
His half-brother Cadirus Latrell Walker likewise has been charged with aggravated assault, and later murder, but now faces only a misdemeanor of lying to police.
All those charges were filed before Mark Jones took office in January, after defeating his predecessor in the 2020 election. Jones said he will ask grand jurors to indict the pair for murder.
That follows complaints from Danny Jones’ family that they were not notified this year when Piett was released on bond.
The victim’s nephew alleged this violated the Georgia Crime Victims Bill of Rights, which among other provisions guarantees victims’ families:
- The right to reasonable, accurate, and timely notice of any scheduled court proceedings or any changes to such proceedings.
- The right to reasonable, accurate, and timely notice of the arrest, release, or escape of the accused.
- The right to be heard at any scheduled court proceedings involving the release, plea, or sentencing of the accused.
Danny Jones family conscientiously has tracked each development in the case, aided by a victim’s advocate with the district attorney’s office.
But a crucial step was missed, the family says.
When Piett was released on bond March 15, after spending 396 days in the Muscogee County Jail, they never saw it coming. They found out when the jail called to tell them.
Because the family was not notified in advance, a nephew filed a court motion, without an attorney, demanding a hearing.
Judge Maureen Gottfried set the hearing for March 31, but the nephew withdrew it after speaking with the district attorney.
The district attorney said April 8 that he will pursue murder charges again, in an upcoming grand jury session, in yet another twist to this case that began with kids playing basketball in the street.
Why charges changed three times
Danny Jones’ neck was fractured when his head hit the edge of a sidewalk as he struggled with Piett about 5 p.m., Feb. 13, 2020, police said. Walker also was involved in the dispute over neighborhood kids playing basketball on Charter Oaks Circle, off Weems Road.
Police said Jones berated the players as he passed through in his red pickup. Among the kids was a younger sibling of Piett and Walker, who reported this to them.
Piett’s attorney, William Kendrick, said his client was asleep when the sibling woke him up to tell him about the man in the red pickup.
The brothers went to where Jones parked at his brother’s home on Wimbish Court, around the corner from Charter Oaks Circle.
Kendrick said Piett went there only to talk to Jones about the kids: “He just addressed a concern.”
A struggle began when Danny Jones stepped outside, witnesses said. Jones’ brother, Amzy Waylan Jones, also was struck.
Columbus police filed the first set of charges the day after Danny Jones was hospitalized, according to police and court records.
On Feb. 14, 2020, Piett was arrested for aggravated battery and aggravated assault, both felonies, and for the misdemeanors of criminal trespass and battery with visible harm.
On Feb. 25, Walker was charged with aggravated assault, battery and criminal trespass. At the time, Piett was 26 and Walker was 25.
After Jones had additional complications and was removed from life support Feb. 21, police weighed changing the charges, as they awaited the autopsy results. Meanwhile Walker was released on bond May 8, jail records show.
The autopsy report, dated July 20, said Jones died with a fractured spine and a blood clot in his brain, the result of the trauma sustained in the struggle.
Detective Damien Jones got warrants charging Piett and Walker with murder. Walker was arrested again on July 29, and Piett’s charges were upgraded on Aug. 3, according to jail records. Both were held without bond, on the murder charges.
But then their charges changed again.
On Dec. 9, then-Assistant District Attorney Robin King took the case before a Muscogee County grand jury. Based on the evidence presented, which included a witness recanting an earlier account of the fight, the grand jurors indicted neither brother for murder.
They indicted Piett for felony involuntary manslaughter, alleging he fatally injured Jones “without any intention to do so.” He also was indicted for three misdemeanors:
- Simple battery, alleging he struck Jones in “an insulting and provoking nature.”
- Simple battery for allegedly hitting Amzy Jones.
- Criminal trespass for “knowingly and without authority” intruding upon Amzy Jones’ property on Wimbish Court.
The grand jury indicted Walker for a single misdemeanor: Making a false statement to police, alleging he “knowingly and willfully” lied to investigators by telling them he knew nothing about the fight and wasn’t there.
On Dec. 11, Walker again was released on bond. Piett remained in jail, his bond still set at $200,000, on his previous murder charge.
Danny Jones’ family was informed of the indictments in December. Then the prosecutor in Jones’ case, Robin King, left the DA’s office to work as a public defender, a job she’d held before.
Mark Jones, having defeated incumbent DA Julia Slater in the 2020 elections, took office Jan. 4, before assigning the case to prosecutor Tina Stanford.
Family not notified
As he lingered in the hospital on life support, Danny Jones could only blink to communicate, his brother said at a May 7 bond hearing for the suspects: “To this day and from now on, I will always wonder if he really did understand me when I told him how much I loved him,” the brother said.
Danny Jones had two children and a granddaughter, said his sister Lucy Bailey. He was close to retiring from TSYS, she said.
“I believe he suffered unimaginable pain, fear and anxiety,” she testified. “No one deserves to go through this.”
Her son, Christopher Bailey, filed the court motion alleging violations of the state law meant to ensure victims’ families are notified when suspects are likely to be released from jail.
Both Kendrick and Walker’s defense counsel Stacey Jackson said they had never seen such a motion before.
The family filed the action because they weren’t told March 4 that Piett’s bonds had been cut from $200,000 to $45,000.
Christopher Bailey laid out a sequence of events in his pro se motion:
He wrote that victim’s advocate Brittney Lyles told him Feb. 16 that Piett was to have a bond hearing the next day, and the family planned to attend, via teleconference, but the hearing was canceled. Bailey said he informed Lyles the family would like to know when it was rescheduled, and confirmed with her that Piett’s bond still was $200,000.
He said he checked back on March 4, and was told nothing had changed.
That was the day Piett’s bond was cut low enough to allow his release, after the grand jury rejected the murder charges police had pursued, basing the remaining counts on misdemeanor offenses.
After learning March 15 that Piett was leaving the jail, Bailey contacted Lyles the next day, to ask why the family wasn’t told about the new bond, his motion said.
“She stated that this was the first she’d heard of it, and later forwarded me the contact information for Tina Stanford,” Bailey wrote.
Stanford was the prosecutor Mark Jones assigned to the case.
In his motion, Bailey wrote that he called Stanford:
“I asked Tina Stanford why we weren’t allowed to attend or speak at the hearing. Her response was ‘That’s my bad.’ I asked Tina Stanford why we weren’t notified about his conditions of release and why the first we were hearing of any of this, was from the Muscogee County Jail as he was bonding out. Tina Stanford’s response was, again, ‘That’s my bad.’”
Stanford denied that, to the Ledger-Enquirer.
“I did not say that,” she said. “I don’t even use language like that.”
She said she had not seen Bailey’s motion.
She acknowledged no bond hearing was held on Piett’s manslaughter charge because his attorney filed a “consent order,” which a judge may approve without a hearing, if the prosecutor consents.
Bailey’s motion asked Gottfried to “halt proceedings” to hear the family’s complaint, before he withdrew it March 31.
Mark Jones acknowledged the oversight in notifying the family, and said he reassigned Stanford afterward.
Because Jones has said he again will pursue murder charges, Walker’s attorney Stacey Jackson has declined to comment on the case.
Kendrick said the grand jury could have indicted Piett for murder in December, after reviewing the evidence, and its decision shows his client committed no felony to justify a murder charge.
“There’s just no evidence that it was intentional,” he said.
Mark Jones disputed that, saying the evidence shows Piett threw Danny Jones to the ground in a “piledriver” motion.
Piett and Walker so far remain free on bond, as they and Danny Jones’ family wait to see what happens next.
This story was originally published April 18, 2021 at 6:00 AM.