Theodore T. Jones Jr., New York Appeals Court Judge, Dies at 68 Theodore T. Jones Jr., a judge on New York State's highest court, the Court of Appeals, who as a lower-court judge in 2005 clashed with New York City's transit union during a three-day strike that shut down subways and buses at the height of the holiday season, died on Tuesday at his home in New City, N.Y., in Rockland County. The cause was a heart attack, his secretary, Dora Hancock, said. Judge Jones, a leading proponent of measures to prevent wrongful convictions, was appointed to the appeals court in 2007 by Gov. Eliot Spitzer. But he came to wide public attention two years earlier as a State Supreme Court justice in Brooklyn when Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union defied his injunction and staged the city's first transit strike in a quarter-century. The justice had made the ruling under the state's Taylor Law, which prohibits public employees from striking. For three days New Yorkers walked, rode bikes, car-pooled and even skateboarded to work as shopping slowed and businesses suffered. When a tentative contract agreement was reached on Dec. 22, Justice Jones said he was "hopeful that we will be able to salvage Christmas." Three months later, he fined the union $2.5 million and sentenced its president, Roger Toussaint, to 10 days in jail for contempt of court. Justice Jones castigated both sides in the dispute, saying the strike was a low point in labor relations. "Many people suffered severely," he said. Working people of the city and the metro area took it in the neck. Justice Jones was appointed an associate judge on the seven-member Court of Appeals shortly after Governor Spitzer took office. Six months earlier, Mr. Spitzer's predecessor, George E. Pataki, had declined to renominate Judge George Bundy Smith, leaving the court without a black jurist for the first time since 1985. Government should reflect "the diversity of our society," Mr. Spitzer said in appointing Judge Jones, who was black, but the governor added that his foremost criterion in making the choice was "who would be the best jurist." In 2009, the chief judge of the court, Jonathan Lippman, chose Judge Jones and Janet DiFiore, the Westchester County district attorney, to lead the newly created Justice Task Force, with the goal of reducing wrongful convictions. "I can't think of anyone more committed to equal justice for everyone who enters our courts," Judge Lippman said of Judge Jones in an interview on Wednesday. He had the passion, the energy and the practical skills to develop solutions to what once seemed an intractable problem. The task force's 22 members include judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, legislators, forensic scientists and police officials. One member, Peter J. Neufeld, who is co-director of the Innocence Project, said that among the measures the panel had proposed was a bill that would mandate videotaping of interrogations in serious crimes and improve eyewitness identification procedures by requiring that lineups be administered by an investigator who does not know the suspect's identity. The bill is sponsored by Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol, a Democrat from Brooklyn. Another measure would expand defense lawyers" access to DNA evidence. Ms. DiFiore said that on a panel whose members held widely divergent views, Judge Jones had the ability to "find ways to round the edges and bring people to consensus." Theodore Theopolis Jones Jr. was born in Brooklyn on March 10, 1944, to Theodore and Hortense Parker Jones. The family later moved to Jamaica, Queens. His mother was a teacher and his father worked for the Long Island Rail Road, becoming a station master at Pennsylvania Station. Judge Jones graduated from Hampton University, a historically black college in Virginia, and received his law degree from St. John's University. He served in the Army in Vietnam from 1967 to 1969 and became a criminal defense lawyer for the Legal Aid Society and in private practice. He was elected to the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn in 1989 and re-elected in 2003. He is survived by his wife of 45 years, the former Joan Hogans; two sons, Wesley and Theodore III; a brother, Lawrence; a sister, Theodora Blackmon; and two grandchildren.