$39 for One Year. Save 67%.
$39 for One Year. Save 67%.

Messy Family Court battles can crush souls, stir rage, sometimes ignite violence

Perry Vandell
The Republic |
Connie Jones answers questions during a press conference on June 12, 2018, at the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office in Flagstaff.

"How can we prevent this from happening again?"

It's a question often asked following a tragedy involving senseless violence or loss.

Most recently in the Valley, it's been on the minds of legal and mental-health professionals following a murderous rampage in the Phoenix area that left seven dead, including spree shooter Dwight Jones.

Authorities said the center of the 56-year-old's anger, apparently, was a messy divorce that took seven years to finalize. 

Although divorce cases rarely end in violence on such a scale, many are emotionally charged legal battles where a person the parents have never met decides how the life their family once shared will fracture.

The spouse many once considered their best friend could espouse secrets in public.

Parents accused of suffering from mental illness or substance abuse may have to prove the opposite or risk losing legal authority over major life decisions involving a child.

Some cases are fair and amicable, with neither side needing nor wanting an attorney.

The others? They're another story.

Did the courts do enough?

Jones’ ex-wife, Connie, eventually broke her silence and told reporters the courts failed her family. She said courts allowed Dwight Jones to have supervised visitation when experts agreed he was a danger to their child, though court records show the people who supervised his visits said they should continue.

“It seems to me that if someone is a danger to the child, why are we putting the rights of the parent over the safety of the child?” Connie Jones asked. “That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

She said the court gave Dwight Jones more chances than he deserved.

But her attorney, Elizabeth Feldman, didn’t echo her client’s remarks.

“I think the blame, so to speak, lies with all of us and our representatives,” Feldman said. “I certainly understand where all my clients come from, including Connie here. I think under the circumstances, however, I think the court system worked pretty well this time.”

Janet Barton, presiding judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court, wrote an op-ed in The Arizona Republic saying there was nothing the court could have done to prevent Jones' massacre. 

READ MORE: Judge: Court didn't fail Dwight Jones' victims

Judge George Foster was working in Family Court in 2013 and inherited the Jones case. He’s now on the Criminal Court bench. On June 14, during a sentencing hearing in a domestic-violence case, he started to wax judicious on the Jones case.

“I could see there was tension between the husband and the wife, but it wasn’t on my radar that eight years later he would kill six people.”

And judges can't issue orders based on what might happen.

Judge George Foster gives jury instructions in Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix on October 25, 2017.

Bill Brotherton, a former Superior Court judge who served seven and a half years in Family Court, couldn’t say whether the judge overseeing the case made the right decision to let Dwight Jones see his son under supervision because he wasn’t at the hearings.

He noted that the law makes it extremely difficult for a judge to excise a parent from their child’s life entirely because parents have a constitutional right to be in their children’s lives, even if they have a history of violence.

“This has been litigated all the way to the United States Supreme Court,” Brotherton told The Republic. “So the standard for taking away someone’s parenting time completely is quite high.”

When custody battles become dangerous

Tom Leavell, a family-law attorney at Leavell & Rivera PLC in Phoenix, said parents can sometimes be threatening — even dangerous — when they’re going through a divorce.

"Here's the thing about family law that makes it dangerous,” Leavell began. “It's that you're taking away people's kids, you're taking away their money and you're saying things about them that nobody else needs to know."

Spouses tend to know sensitive details about the other, such as a history of substance abuse, Leavell said. Not only can those details be embarrassing, it can affect where and when that parent gets to see their child.

Barb Kiffmeyer, a court-appointed adviser in Maricopa County, said former clients have threatened her — one of whom harasses her online to the point where she can no longer use social media.

Jones isn't the first person to go on a killing spree motivated by divorce. 

In 2011, 71-year-old Carey Hal Dyess murdered his ex-wife and four others in Yuma after their divorce in 2006. One of the victims was his wife's divorce attorney, Jerrold Shelley.


What protections are there?

If a family member feels threatened, they can ask the judge to issue an order of protection against the alleged harasser. That order requires the accused to give up all of their firearms and ammunition for up to a year, unless they object to the order.

Few judges overturn the order, Leavell said, partially because they don’t want to be known as the judge who denied a protection order before someone is murdered.

Connie Jones had four orders of protection against her ex-husband, one obtained each year from 2009 through 2012. After that, Dwight Jones was free to purchase and own a firearm.

READ MORE: ATF: Scottsdale shooter used legally owned gun

Leavell said orders of protection are useful — but only when used against law-abiding citizens. If someone really wants to harm a spouse, an order of protection won’t do much good.

"But truly bottom line an order of protection? It's a piece of paper. It's not gonna stop a bullet and it's not going to stop a knife," Leavell said.

It can get messy without attorneys

Peter Westby, an attorney at Platt & Westby P.C. in Phoenix, said the pain and anguish parents and children endure throughout divorce cases are what make them so difficult. The law itself? That’s the simple part.

“These are very emotionally charged cases,” Westby said. “You're dealing with people's lives, their property, their children, the tremendous emotional investment they've made in a marriage relationship over a period of years, and you just don't unravel that easily.”

Those without a legal background often don’t know what information is useful to a judge, Westby said, who has practiced law for 40 years. Likewise, many parents have trouble providing unbiased information — especially during the early stages of divorce.

"If you have two experienced family-law lawyers, you can get it done. If you have two individuals that are just floundering, then the court has to guide them as much as it can, and that makes it difficult.”

Westby estimates nine out of 10 people aren’t represented by attorneys for a variety of reasons. They might not be able to afford one or think they need one. Others, Westby said, follow advice from friends or family who got divorced without an attorney.

“These are issues that are very important,” he said. “They're life-changing issues. They're issues that you shouldn't just go into based upon what your brother-in-law did.”

He recommends people consult with a family-law attorney even if they don’t think they need or can afford one, as most firms provide free consultations that can at least point them in the right direction.

Kiffmeyer said most Family Court judges will let parents act out in ways that are unacceptable in Criminal Court as they understand the hardship many parents undergo during the death of a marriage.

Attorneys: Family Court is more equal now

Leavell says many people believe mothers have an unfair advantage when debating custody over a child during divorce proceedings.

He also said those people would be wrong.

“It used to be that way,” Leavell said. “Arizona used to be what we would consider a ‘mother state.’ ”

Leavell said that, most of the time, dads would have the child every other weekend and on a school night.

But laws eventually changed to maximize parenting time with both parents, he said.

Westby echoed a similar sentiment.

“The perception that 'the mother is always right' is absolutely untrue,” Westby said. “Dads get custody a lot in Arizona. I understand the perception. I don't know how we're going to be able to get rid of that.”

Lack of mental-health services

While Maricopa County pays for services such as drug screenings and counseling in Criminal and Juvenile courts, parents are on their own in Family Court.

Kiffmeyer said it's a major issue, as many divorce cases involve someone suffering from substance abuse or mental illness.

"Unfortunately, we don't have resources to help these families. There are no free mental-health evaluations," Kiffmeyer told The Republic. "There's no free mental-health treatment. Family Court can't pay for any of these things, and that's a huge obstacle for a lot of families who may need this but they may not have access."

Parents who can't afford a drug screening, for example, might not be able to see their kids unsupervised, Kiffmeyer added. 

Private insurance companies often won't cover court-ordered tests or treatment as well, she said. Oftentimes, judges will "suggest" or "strongly encourage" someone to seek help without issuing a formal order to get around this.

Brotherton expressed similar concerns.

"The problem in our system generally is you have to get in trouble to get any subsidized or free help," he said.

Brotherton said he wasn't the only judge concerned about the mental-health service deficit.

"We've been saying this for a very long time, and I think every judge would like to see more done because probably every Family Court judge or judge who's done Family Court has a case that they think could have turned out like (the Jones case),” Brotherton said. "And just for the grace of God it didn't.

“It's very frustrating because you realize there's very little you can do to help that person, to help the other parent, to help the children,” he continued.

But a person doesn't have to seek help even if they can afford treatment. Steven Pitt diagnosed Dwight Jones as having serious psychiatric issues, but Jones never sought treatment.

Barton outlined why he didn't have to in her op-ed.

"With respect to the psychiatric evaluation, there is little a court can do if a parent fails to participate in services ordered by the court, such as psychiatric treatment or an evaluation," Barton wrote. "The court can’t arrest or jail a person for this; not because the court doesn’t take domestic violence seriously, but because the court has no such legal authority."

Reach the reporter at or 602-444-2474. Follow him on Twitter @PerryVandell.