Curtis Jones, 12, and his sister Catherine Jones, 13, appear in court after killing their father’s girlfriend. They would be charged as adults. Unsealed documents later revealed that the two were being sexually abused and had resorted to murder when nobody believed them, Florida, 1999 [1932 x 1092].

[A collection of newspaper clippings about the siblings](https://www.newspapers.com/clippings/?tag=Jones%20Children)

[Documents unveil history of abuse for young Brevard killers](https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/local/2015/01/12/documents-unveil-history–abuse–young-brevard-killers/21646415/)

In almost any other state, the Jones siblings would’ve been tried as juveniles.

In most U.S. states, one has to be at least 14 to be tried as an adult for any crime. In most states, it is still rare for juveniles under the age of 16 to be tried as adults for crimes other than murder, attempted murder, or rape. Florida is an exception. To this day, it remains the top in the nation in trying juveniles as adults. Unlike in most states, the prosecutor, not a juvenile court judge, decides when to prosecute a juvenile as an adult. This widely criticized law was implemented in 1978. Back then, it was far more limited in the scope, only applying to those over the age of 15 and when the charges included far more serious crimes, such as murder or rape. However, it was expanded in the 1990s.

Of all the high-profile cases of juveniles being tried as adults in Florida in the 1990s, the Jones siblings were among the most sympathetic. Despite this, they would not draw anywhere near as much attention as [Nathaniel Brazill](https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/local/2020/05/21/teen-teacher-gun-2000-school-shooting-staggered-palm-beach-county/41751685/), [Lionel Tate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Tate), and the [King brothers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Terry_King), all also in Florida, eventually would in 2001. The reason for that was fairly simple.

>There was no trial. There was no testimony. There was no opportunity to present the documentation from the agency that showed welfare investigators found signs on more than one occasion that the siblings were being abused by a family member. That same family member had already been convicted of sexually assaulting his girlfriend’s daughter in 1993. “It is somewhat haunting to me that there was a world of horrors that this child was growing up in that was never explored,” said Curtis Jones’ attorney Alan Landman. “As a lawyer, we are only as effective as the information given to us by our clients or that which we can glean from the charges and the discovery received by the State. There was absolutely no indication in the entire case of what was truly going on behind the scenes and in the life of Curtis and his sister.”