FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Saturday, May 24, 2008
TREVION MAURICE JONES SENTENCED IN U.S. DISTRICT COURT
Bill Mercer, United States Attorney for the District of Montana, announced today that during a federal court session in Missoula, on May 23, 2008, before U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy, TREVION MAURICE JONES, a 31-year-old resident of Missoula, appeared for sentencing. JONES was sentenced to a term of:
- Prison: 46 months
- Special Assessment: $100
- Supervised Release: 3 years
JONES was sentenced in connection with his guilty plea to being a felon-in-possession of a firearm.
In an Offer of Proof filed by the United States, the government stated it would have proved at trial the following:
On April 21, 1998, JONES was convicted of felony possession with the intent to distribute cocaine in federal court in Billings.
On November 30, 2006, officers from the Missoula Police Department responded to the residence to investigate a shooting. The officers interviewed several witnesses, two of whom had observed JONES enter the residence and shortly thereafter heard what sounded like gunfire. They then observed JONES run out of the house and fire several rounds into the residence as he left the scene.
Immediately after the shooting, JONES went to an area residence where he remained until the next afternoon. He then fled the jurisdiction for California, where he was later arrested. JONES left the firearm used in the shooting, a 9 mm Springfield Armory pistol, model P9 at the residence. The owner of the home eventually threw the gun into the Clark Fork River at the Schwartz Creek Fishing Access, where it was recovered by law enforcement in August of 2007.
A ballistics expert from the Montana State Crime Lab analyzed the firearm recovered from the river and the casings seized from the scene of the shooting and concluded that the seized casings were fired from the pistol recovered from the Clark Fork River.
Because there is no parole in the federal system, the "truth in sentencing" guidelines mandate that JONES will likely serve all of the time imposed by the court. In the federal system, JONES does have the opportunity to earn a sentence reduction for "good behavior." However, this reduction will not exceed 15% of the overall sentence.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy J. Racicot prosecuted the case for the United States.
The investigation was a cooperative effort between the Missoula Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
This conviction is yet another important outcome from Project Safe Neighborhoods, a national priority of the United States Department of Justice. PSN is designed as a partnership between federal and local law enforcement to reduce violent crime and gun-related crime through the vigorous enforcement of the criminal provisions of the federal firearms laws. In Montana, the effort under PSN is called "Catch and No Release."
