Stitt has no time limit to make a decision on Mr. Jones-Davis said that the fight against his execution was not over, since the board’s recommendation had not been approved by the governor. “It is a shame to me that a whole entire state can bury a man alive for 22 years, lock the door and throw away the key while he waits to be executed.” “It really is a shame to me that it has taken millions of people, literally, to save one Black man’s life in America,” she said. It was telling, she added, that so much outside attention was needed to push the case onto the governor’s desk. I couldn’t even believe what was happening.” “When the vote came through, it was very surreal,” she said. On Monday, she was outside the parole board hearing in Oklahoma City with a crowd of demonstrators, awaiting the result. Jones’s community had been fighting his execution, and that the news media attention had increased those efforts. “The Oklahoma County district attorney’s office has waged a very intense and public campaign to execute Julius Jones for over 20 years, funded by taxpayers,” he added, “including many taxpayers who do not believe Julius got a fair trial and who think the state is seeking to execute an innocent man.”Ĭece Jones-Davis, who directs an Oklahoma-based campaign called Justice for Julius Jones, said that many people from Mr. “But we do have the truth.”ĭaniel Forkkio, the chief executive of Represent Justice, said in an emailed statement that the organization had helped to amplify the work of the Jones family and others who had petitioned state officials on behalf of Mr. “We don’t have a Represent Justice, which is a California 510c(3), on our side,” he said. Jones had advocates outside Oklahoma, pointing to a nonprofit organization in Los Angeles that has supported the campaign to free him. Jones’s case has been a focus of several high-profile media projects - including a 2018 documentary series produced by Viola Davis, a podcast episode last year featuring Kim Kardashian West and a recent episode of The Late Late Show with James Corden - as well as several public demonstrations.īrian Howell said that Mr. Jordan, who visited the home after the killing, could have planted the weapon there. The police found the gun and the bandanna in Mr. Jones to a red bandanna that was found wrapped around the murder weapon. Howell’s relatives who witnessed the murder and a DNA test that linked Mr. Howell’s family and David Prater, the district attorney for Oklahoma County, who opposes the commutation of Mr. African Americans make up a disproportionate number of death row prisoners in Oklahoma and in the United States, and research has shown that people convicted of murder are much more likely to be executed if the person who was killed was white. Jones’s supporters have also argued that racism played a role in his trial and sentencing. Jordan have said that he confessed to framing Mr. People who were incarcerated alongside Mr. Howell but served a reduced sentence and was released in 2014, could not be reached for comment this week. Jordan, who was also convicted of murdering Mr. Howell’s killing - and that prosecutors relied too much on the testimony of Christopher Jordan, a co-defendant who said that he had seen Mr. ![]() Jones and his supporters have argued that his defense lawyers failed him during his trial - for instance, by neglecting to question family members who have said that he was having dinner with them at the time of Mr. “Our family continues to be victimized by Julius Jones and his lies.” “We are devastated by the decision reached today by the pardon and parole board,” his brother Brian Howell said at a news conference on Monday. Jones’s death sentence to life in prison, with the possibility of parole - is a significant step in a case that has captured attention across the United States, prompting public demonstrations, celebrity advocacy and debates over capital punishment in a state where officials had to temporarily halt executions after a string of botched procedures. The parole board’s recommendation - to commute Mr. Howell, a businessman from the suburb of Edmond, was 45. Jones, 41, a former high school basketball player from Oklahoma City, was 19 at the time of the killing, which he says he did not commit. He was accused of killing Paul Howell, who was in a car in the driveway of his parents’ home when he was carjacked and fatally shot in 1999. ![]() ![]() The man, Julius Jones, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 2002. 17: Supporters appeal for clemency as Julius Jones’s execution nearsĪ man on death row in Oklahoma could be one step closer to being released from prison after the state’s pardon and parole board recommended this week that his sentence be commuted, sending the case to the governor’s desk.
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