Supporters Appeal for Clemency for Death Row Inmate Julius Jones

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Hundreds of learners walked out of educational facilities and activists shown outside the house the governor’s place of work on Wednesday in a last endeavor to persuade the Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma to grant clemency to a demise-row inmate who is scheduled to be executed on Thursday.

The inmate, Julius Jones, was convicted of very first-degree murder and sentenced to loss of life in 2002. He was accused of killing Paul Howell, who was in a car in the driveway of his parents’ residence when he was carjacked and fatally shot in 1999.

Mr. Jones, 41, a previous large college basketball participant from Oklahoma Metropolis, was 19 at the time of the killing, which he claims he did not commit. Mr. Howell, a businessman from the suburb of Edmond, was 45.

In September and yet again this thirty day period, the state’s Pardon and Parole Board proposed that Mr. Jones’s sentence be commuted to existence in jail with the possibility of parole, a substantial action in a circumstance that has garnered countrywide interest, said Cece Jones-Davis, who directs an Oklahoma-dependent marketing campaign referred to as Justice for Julius.

But Mr. Jones, his family members and his supporters are continue to waiting to listen to irrespective of whether Mr. Stitt, a Republican, will accept or reject the board’s suggestion, Ms. Jones-Davis mentioned. Mr. Jones is scheduled to be executed by deadly injection at 4 p.m. on Thursday.

“We are hoping and believing and trusting that the governor is nonetheless likely to do the right matter,” Ms. Jones-Davis mentioned on Wednesday. “But we are coming down to the hour.”

The Oklahoma Metropolis Public Faculties estimated that far more than 1,800 learners across 13 schools had participated in walkouts to assist Mr. Jones on Wednesday. The district explained that it “supports our students’ rights to tranquil assembly and their flexibility of expression.”

At the State Home, scores of Mr. Jones’s supporters prayed, sang and chanted “free Julius Jones.” Madeline Davis-Jones, Mr. Jones’s mother, advised the group that her son was harmless.

“If my baby is executed tomorrow, or any working day, it ought to be devoid of a doubt,” she claimed. “It should not be a question. Not even a very little little bit of question.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Stitt stated in an e-mail: “We will not have any responses until finally after the governor has built a determination.”

If he is executed, Mr. Jones would be the next man or woman set to death by the Point out of Oklahoma since John Marion Grant, who was convicted of murdering a prison cafeteria employee in 1998, was executed on Oct. 28.

Mr. Grant, 60, was the state’s 1st inmate to die by lethal injection considering that 2015, when Oklahoma stopped executions soon after making use of the wrong drug in 1 occasion and allowing for a prisoner to regain consciousness in one more.

Mr. Grant vomited when shaking for a number of minutes in the course of the execution, which reporters who have witnessed executions named very exceptional in their practical experience. But state jail officials stated a working day following Mr. Grant’s execution that they did not strategy to make any improvements to the state’s lethal injection protocols.

“I will agree inmate Grant’s regurgitation was not enjoyable to view,” Scott Crow, the director of Oklahoma’s prison procedure, explained at a digital news convention on Oct. 29. “But I do not imagine that it was inhumane.”

Credit…Oklahoma Section of Corrections, through Related Press

Mr. Jones, a Black man who has used about half of his existence in jail, has long managed his innocence.

“I did not eliminate Mr. Howell,” he wrote in a letter to the parole board in April, just after he experienced exhausted his appeals. “I did not take part in any way in his murder and the 1st time I observed him was on television when his loss of life was reported.”

But relatives of Mr. Howell, a white man whose sister and two daughters witnessed his killing, have rejected these claims and explained that the endeavours to grant clemency to Mr. Jones have induced them ache.

“Our family continues to be victimized by Julius Jones and his lies,” Mr. Howell’s brother, Brian Howell, explained at a information meeting in September.

Mr. Jones and his supporters have argued that his defense legal professionals failed him in the course of his trial — for occasion, by neglecting to query household users who have claimed that he was obtaining supper with them at the time of Mr. Howell’s killing — and that prosecutors relied much too greatly on the testimony of a co-defendant who explained that he experienced found Mr. Jones dedicate the crime.

Mr. Jones’s supporters have also argued that racism played a purpose in his demo and sentencing. African People make up a disproportionate range of death row prisoners in Oklahoma and in the United States, and investigation has proven that persons convicted of murder are a great deal extra most likely to be executed if the particular person who was killed was white.

Mr. Jones’s attraction for clemency has drawn assistance from outstanding figures in athletics, politics and leisure.

Last month, Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, and Timothy Head, the govt director for the Religion & Independence Coalition, wrote a letter to Mr. Stitt urging him to commute Mr. Jones’s sentence.

“We consider that question about Jones’s duty for the cash crime is not insignificant,” Mr. Schlapp and Mr. Head wrote.

On Wednesday, Baker Mayfield, a quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, who received the Heisman Trophy as a participant for the College of Oklahoma soccer group, also expressed hope that Mr. Jones would not be executed.

“We’re 24 several hours away,” he instructed reporters. “So it is difficult. You know, hopefully God can intervene and handle it effectively and do the items he requirements to do.”

Mr. Jones’s situation has been showcased in a 2018 documentary series manufactured by Viola Davis, a podcast episode final year that includes Kim Kardashian West and a the latest episode of “The Late Late Demonstrate With James Corden.”

“Julius, his loved ones and everyone on his group are still hopeful Stitt will do the right matter,” Ms. Kardashian West wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

Jacey Fortin contributed reporting.