by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
He isn’t the next Johnny Cochran yet, but local defense attorney Mark Green is on national television almost as often.
Green was recently featured on a new nationally televised program regarding his most famous case, the 1996 Linda Jones murder trial. He and former client Linda Jones appeared on a new episode of “Snapped,” a cable television program on the Oxygen Network that features stories of female criminals and what made them snap.
This wasn’t the first time Green has been on national television, however. He has been featured on four different national television programs including this new show, A&E’s American Justice and Court TV’s live “Gavel to Gavel” coverage of the trial in 1996.
“I guess it was interesting for (television) because it had all of the ingredients of a lover’s triangle,” said Green, a partner at Coker, Myers, Schickel, Sorenson and Green. “Only the sensational cases get the gavel-to-gavel coverage.”
And the Jones case was definitely sensational. Jones was convicted of hiring three men to kill her husband, Jack Jones, after he took a teenage lover. The teenaged lover happened to be a high school student
from a broken family that
Jones befriended and let
live in the Jones’ home for a period.
After a week-long trial in Clay County, Jones was found guilty and is now serving a life sentence.
Though disappointed that his client is in prison for life, Green said the case and the aftermath has been the experience of a lifetime.
“It was a unique, interesting experience,” Green said. “Obviously, I would much rather have had a different result and I would have rather wanted her to be acquitted.”
Green said he is often recognized on the street as a direct result of the television coverage but said the exposure hasn’t really changed his life all that much.
“I have had friends and relatives from all over the country call and say they saw me on
TV, but mostly from the replay, not from the original broadcast,” he said. “It hasn’t really changed my life at all but
it keeps bringing (the Jones case) back up every time I
see it or when people talk about it.”
Green said whenever he is recognized or the television shows are mentioned, he often thinks about what he could have done differently for the case.
“I think ‘Gee, I could have done this or I could have done that differently’ but now I can’t really think of anything that we would have done differently,” he said.