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“Julius Jones is innocent!” a man shouted from the crowd.Īpart from Jones, five more men are set to die in Oklahoma between December and March 2022. A large set of speakers sat ready to broadcast the proceedings. Rows of folding chairs were arranged to face a women’s prison across the street, the location where the hearing would take place. A spread of fruit, granola bars, and honey buns was laid out under a blue tent. Chanting and waving signs, they passed the headquarters of Oklahoma’s Department of Corrections, then arrived at another church.Ĭars parked outside had “Justice 4 Julius” written on the windows. “What makes this different,” Jones-Davis told the crowd, “is that today Julius Jones gets to speak for himself.” After a prayer, the crowd turned out of the parking lot toward Martin Luther King Jr. A minister and social justice activist, she had helped lead countless actions in Oklahoma City in the days before the clemency hearing. Cece Jones-Davis took the mic in the church parking lot. “This is David versus Goliath,” Howell’s nephew said.Īround 8:15 a.m.

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After years of refusing interview requests, the family told a local TV station in September that they felt re-victimized by the celebrity-studded movement in support of Jones. Yet the publicity around his case has also sparked backlash from prosecutors and Howell’s family, who accuse Jones’s supporters of manipulating the public by misrepresenting the facts. Recent opinion polls taken from Oklahoma voters showed that 60 percent of those familiar with Jones believed that his death sentence should be commuted.

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Jones’s case was relatively obscure outside Oklahoma until 2018, when ABC aired a seven-part documentary series titled “The Last Defense.” Produced by actor Viola Davis, it laid out the case for Jones’s innocence - and catapulted his name into the public eye. Jordan was released after 15 years in prison. Although the alleged murder weapon was recovered from his parents’ home, Jones insists that he was framed by his co-defendant, a former high school classmate named Christopher Jordan, who testified against him in exchange for a secret plea deal. The case rested largely on a single eyewitness account, along with the testimony of two confidential informants. Jones was sentenced to death in 2002 for killing a white man named Paul Howell in an affluent suburb of Oklahoma City. Despite pending federal litigation over the state’s execution protocols - and a recommendation from the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board that Jones’s sentence be commuted to life in prison - Jones is scheduled to die on November 18 for a crime he swears he did not commit. Now Jones faces the danger of a similar fate. Yet officials denied that anything had gone wrong. Witnesses described how he vomited and repeatedly convulsed shortly after the lethal injection began. Like the previous two men sent into the state’s death chamber - whose botched executions thrust Oklahoma’s dysfunctional capital punishment system into the national spotlight - Grant struggled before he died. A few days earlier, on October 28, Oklahoma had carried out its first execution since 2015, killing a 60-year-old Black man named John Grant by lethal injection.

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“We’re here to free an innocent man on death row,” Smith told me, adding that he wanted to raise awareness about other cases too.

It read “Are YOU Willing to Be the Innocent Person Executed?” Standing in the parking lot, Smith propped up a massive green banner featuring Jones’s face. Others, like Eugene Smith, were new to the cause. They were dressed for warmth, in winter hats, hoodies, and face masks that read “Justice for Julius.” Some, such as Abraham Bonowitz of Death Penalty Action, were veteran anti-death penalty organizers. at the Tabernacle Baptist Church on Oklahoma City’s northeast side. On the day of Julius Jones’s clemency hearing, a crowd began gathering well before 8 a.m.