A Maryland man was convicted of first degree murder in the 1990 shooting of the son of a retired Washington DC homicide detective. John B. Holmes, 40, was accused of shooting Ronald Jones, Jr., then 22, after a traffic argument twenty years ago. According to witness testimony, Jones and his friends began arguing with another driver, identified as Holmes, who pulled out a .357 magnum when they approached a traffic light and shot Jones four times.

While several years went by without a suspect, an acquaintance of Holmes, Rodney Hunt, eventually told authorities in 2003 that he was following Holmes after a party and witnessed the shooting. After Hunt's tip, a friend of Jones identified Holmes as the shooter from a photograph in 2007, seventeen years after the incident. John Holmes was charged with the murder in 2008. Holmes's Washington DC criminal defense attorney argued that Hunt is a convicted criminal himself, and that he falsely identified Holmes as the shooter in an effort to seek revenge against his former friend.

Prosecutors called John Holmes a "remorseless killer," but his DC criminal defense lawyers say that there is no DNA evidence linking their client to the scene, and that the evidence in the case is based on questionable eyewitness identification. Despite such shaky evidence during the four day trial, a DC Superior Court jury took less than two hours to return a guilty verdict for John Holmes.Holmes's sentencing is scheduled for October 29, 2010.

This article is presented by Price Benowitz, LLP, a criminal and DUI defense firm serving Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia. For more stories like this one, please visit our Maryland DUI Lawyer blog.