This may not be the most appropriate story on Thanksgiving, but I wanted to give you all an update on a story out of Kentucky that deals with the blatant politicization and corruption of the use of the pardon power that governor’s possess. Specifically, this deals with former Republican Governor Matt Bevin — Kentucky’s own mini-Trump- pardonpalooza when he was leaving office. The case I am writing about involves a convicted rapist by the name of Dayton Jones, and how Jones’s grandparents essentially paid to obtain a pardon for their grandson through campaign contributions to the new Republican district attorney of Christian County, Kentucky. In the end, the public outcry was so fierce that the federal government indicted, tried, and convicted Jones on child pornography in order to send him back to prison.
A small measure of justice in Kentucky.
The story is a bit complicated, so let’s go back to how Dayton Jones found himself in legal trouble.
Dayton Jones is from Christian County, KY, and he and a group of high school/college students gathered for party. No one at the party was over 21, but as kids will do, they found a way for booze to be purchased and to flow freely at this party. And as drunken kids will do, someone found or had on them a “sex toy.”
Yes, you can see where this is heading.
According to court documents, on October 11, 2014, a group of high school and college students got together at a friend’s apartment. The students, almost all of whom were under the age of 21, consumed significant amounts of alcohol. A fifteen-year-old boy (John Doe), passed out from alcohol intoxication. When John Doe passed out, several other males took turns sexually assaulting him with a sex toy. Jones made an audio and video recording of the assault which he then distributed to others via the social media application “Snapchat.”
This is something you see on Law and Order SVU. A bunch of morons decided that it would be “fun” to use a 12 inch dildo to fuck some unconscious teenage boy up the ass. Then, Mr. Jones thought that it would be even funnier to make a video of it and upload it to Snapchat.
As someone who has been sexually assaulted by an older boy when I was 15 years old, I don’t see anything funny about any of this. There is so much emotional/sexually pathology being demonstrated by those boys. This sounds like something right out of a prison.
No, I am not condoning what goes on in prison either. I don’t think prison rape should be tolerated. But because are prisons are so fucked up, this is the type of sick gang behavior that goes on in American prisons.
Anyway, did I mention that they almost killed their victim? They had been so rough with their rape that they puncture his rectum, and the boy had to be rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. In fact, the victim has had multiple surgeries to repair the damage from the gang rape.
Jones and his fellow gangbangers were tried, convicted,and sent to prison. And that should have been the end to that horrific tale. But then, Christian County elected a Republican for district attorney in 2018. And his name is Rick Boling. Mr. Boling had defeated the previous DA Lynn Pryor, who just happened to be a Democrat.
And guess what DA Boling did? He wrote a letter to outgoing Republican Govenor Matt Bevin accussing the local judge and former DA of having a “political vendetta” against Dayton Jones’s grandparents. You see Jones’s grandparents are Republicans, and they made a contribution of several thousand dollars to Boling’s campaign. Boling implored Bevin to pardon Dayton Jones because his conviction was the result of political persecution.
Seeing as Bevin was doing “pay to play” with his pardon power and was a partisan hack to boot, he granted a commutation of Jones’s sentence.
Bevin made this spurious claim to defend his commutation of rapist Dayton Jones:
Justifying his commutation of Dayton Jones' sentence in a brutal sodomy, Gov. Matt Bevin said the only evidence implicating Jones came from co-defendants trying to get leniency for the near-fatal assault on an unconscious 15-year-old boy.
Bevin told The Courier Journal last month that he had read "hundreds of documents" from the case and that "there was nothing there except for the testimony of kids who were getting a better deal by throwing" Jones "under the bus."
Bevin insisted there was no corroborating evidence — "zero, zero" — adding that if Jones, 25, had been "even remotely involved," he wouldn’t have received the commutation.
But a Courier Journal review of the case shows that Bevin was wrong — other witnesses besides Jones' co-defendants implicated him. Indeed, Jones implicated himself.
According to court records, Jones sent a text message from his phone the morning after the 2014 assault, admitting he inserted a sex toy into the victim's anus "a little, but I was for sure not the only one. Everybody did it."
A teenager who was not prosecuted also told a Christian County sheriff’s lieutenant that he saw Jones push the object into the victim, according to his statement.
The old, “Everybody did it!” defense. What’s the problem? It was all in good fun! Hell, if I thought I did anything wrong, why would I text about it?
You did notice that NONE of those other deviant morons got commutations by Bevin? Yes, the other rapists got to sit in prison to serve out the rest of their sentences. Maybe they were all Democrats or independents who didn’t have political pull with Bevin?
Given the political makeup of Christian County, I am betting they are Republicans whose families don’t have the cash to pay to play.
Turns out the rest of Kentucky didn’t think much of Bevin’s abuse of his pardon and commutation powers. Besides rapist Dayton Jones, Bevin let loose a lot of politically connected murderers and child molesters too. And this created a huge public outcry.
The federal prosecutor for the Western District of Kentucky decided to see what he could do, and because moron Jones uploaded the rape of a teenage boy to Snapchat, it counts as child pornography!
Paducah, KY – Dayton Jones, 27, was sentenced this week to 96 months in prison followed by 15 years of supervised release for production of child pornography. There is no parole in the federal system. Jones was also ordered to pay $50,000 in restitution to the victim and he will be required to register as a sex offender upon his release from custody.
As for that asshole Boling, he kicked up such a shit storm that even the Republican legislature in Kentucky decided to start impeachment proceedings against him! This was after he had been indicted for providing false testimony in that letter he sent to Bevin.
Former Christian County prosecutor Rick Boling receives 5-year suspension from Ky. Supreme Court
The Kentucky Supreme Court issued a pair of rulings Thursday related to two former state prosecutors who were subject to impeachment charges, suspending one for five years and lifting the suspension of another.
The state Supreme Court ruled this week to suspend former Christian County commonwealth’s attorney Rick Boling from practicing law for five years. He resigned from his post in the 3rd Judicial District in February to avoid impeachment…
Impeachment proceedings for the two former commonwealth’s attorneys were announced in January.
House Majority Floor Whip Jason Nemes, R-Louisville, had filed resolutions at the start of this year’s session for the state House of Representatives to convene a committee to consider whether to recommend impeachment against Boling and Goldy.
Boling and Goldy were both expelled last August from the Kentucky Commonwealth’s Attorneys’ Association, a state group representing the elected prosecutors, on the grounds that Goldy and Boling had conducted themselves in manners “well below” the standards set for commonwealth’s attorneys.
Boling, who represented Christian County, reportedly falsified testimony that led to an indictment and wrote a letter to former Gov. Matt Bevin asking him to pardon a sex offender, claiming without proof that his conviction was a vendetta against the offender’s grandparents who had reportedly donated to Boling’s campaign. Boling apologized for writing the letter in 2020.
Yes, Boling tried to write an apology letter in 2020 to save his ass. He stated in his so called “apology letter” that he meant to say he was only expressing what Jones’s grandparents belief was about his conviction. He NEVER meant to impugn the judge and former DA!
No one believed him.
To wrap up, Dayton Jones is back in prison. Boling cannot practice law for the next five years, and he got kicked out Kentucky Commonwealth’s Attorneys’ Association. And from what I know, there is still an ongoing federal investigation into Matt Bevin’s pardons scandal. Also, the Trump mini-me is finished when it comes to any future in Kentucky politics.
As for the survivor of the gang rape, everyone in his town knows what happened. He accepted the federal court’s sentence of Dayton Jones, but he did not appear at the sentencing. He is still trying to recover from the physical trauma he suffered at the hands of those other young men.