Appellate Court Reinstates Guilty Verdict in Child Murder Case

The 8th District Court of Appeals reversed a Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court decision to grant a new trial in the Demetrius Jones murder case.

Maria Russo, public information officer for the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office, said Jones, who had been free on bond, now faces a 15 year to life sentence for the death of 1-year-old Caleb M. Gulley.

Jones had been charged with murder and felonious assault. A jury convicted him of murder, but he was acquitted of the felonious assault charge and his attorney argued that the verdicts were inconsistent. The appellate court ruling reversed the trial court and reinstated the murder verdict.

According to Russo, Jones, who was 20 years old at the time, was babysitting his girlfriend's sons, ages 1 and 3, on March 24, 2009 at a Maplewood Road apartment in . Jones called his girlfriend and said that while feeding the child, the child started to choke and stopped breathing.

Caleb's cause of death was determined to be due to acute internal bleeding from two lacerations of the liver caused by blunt force trauma to the abdomen and fractured ribs. The coroner ruled that the death was a homicide.