A grand jury is scheduled to convene May 10 in Williamson County, Tennessee, to hear evidence in the matter of the country star's headline-making, near-fatal car crash.
"I just feel like there are enough questions," Williamson District Attorney Ron Davis told the Nashville Tennessean. "The grand jury needs to have all the evidence and to be the ones to make the decision."
At issue: Why exactly did George Jones run his sports utility vehicle into a bridge near his Nashville home on March 6--a crash that critically injured the singer?
The state trooper on the scene chalked up the mishap to Jones' chatty (and inattentive) behavior on a cell phone. His accident report left out the part about the "less than full" (that is, somewhat empty) bottle of vodka found under a passenger-side seat in Jones' car.
The trooper said the stuff about the vodka didn't make the report because he just didn't detect any on Jones, a man once nicknamed "No Show" for skipping out on appearances during a particularly hard-living (and boozing) spell.
But--and this is one of the buts that's behind the grand jury--one witness did report smelling alcohol, the Tennessean reports. Others say they saw Jones driving erratically before the crash.
Another "open question," in the words of Davis, is why Jones took the bridge full-on--no veering, no glancing, no clipping.
"He did really just slam into that bridge," Davis tells the newspaper. "That's probably a concern."
There was no comment Tuesday from Jones' Asylum Records. But the label's president previously has said the Jones camp will fight the release of medical records to investigators--including key blood-alcohol tests taken during his hospital stay. Davis says he'll seek a grand-jury subpoena for those.
"People have called to say they don't want George Jones to get preferential treatment, that he should be prosecuted like anyone else," Davis says in the Tennessean. "Then other people are saying, 'Leave him alone, he's been through enough.'"
Jones, 67, walked out of Vanderbilt University Medical Center on March 19--a remarkable recovery considering one of his injuries was a deep cut to his liver.
Jones is best known for country staples such as "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and "The Race Is On."