Attorney: Wrong man is in prison for wounding law officer

(AP) — A man convicted of shooting a Washington state trooper in 2010 is seeking a new trial, saying another man confessed and that the trooper deliberately misidentified him — something the wounded trooper, now a sheriff, adamantly denies.

Martin Jones, 53, is serving a 50-year sentence after being convicted of shooting Scott Johnson in Long Beach, a tourist town in Pacific County on the southwest Washington coast.

Jones' lawyer has filed a new appeal, including sworn declarations from local drug dealer Peter Boer that on the night of the shooting, his brother Nick, a repeat felon, "took credit" for it and sent Peter Boer to dispose of gun parts.

Jones' lawyer, Lenell Nussbaum, said that explains why the trooper's statements differed from those of the only other witness — a tow-truck driver who was with Johnson when he was shot, and who said Jones wasn't the culprit.

Johnson would later describe him as appearing extremely angry, while the tow-truck driver, George Hill, testified that he was "real neutral, like no emotion at all."

At Jones' 2011 trial, a State Patrol detective, Matthew Hughes, recalled the tow-truck driver's reaction: No, that's not the guy. ...

A corrections officer showed him Jones' driver's license photo, with Jones' name underneath it.

The state's theory was that Jones — a grandfather with no criminal history and with close relatives in law enforcement — got out of bed after receiving a text from his wife that she'd been pulled over.

A state expert testified that microscopic markings on the shell found at the scene forensically matched the shells in the box — suggesting the bullet that shot the trooper came from the box in Jones' house.

[...] that type of analysis has been discredited and has no scientific foundation, William Tobin, a retired manager of forensic metallurgy at the FBI Laboratory in Washington, D.C., wrote last month after reviewing the case for Jones' lawyer.

The family eventually hired a private investigator, and the investigator learned that in 2012, a Pacific County fire commissioner named Greg McLeod tried to contact Jones' lawyers.

From the state penitentiary in Walla Walla, Jones said he and his wife always supported law enforcement and even held a fundraiser for the wife of a trooper slain in 1999.