Julius Jones (prisoner)

In February 2020, more than two dozen inmates, including Jones, filed a motion to reopen the 2014 lawsuit, Glossip v. Chandler after the state announced plans to resume executions after a nearly six-year moratorium, claiming the new lethal injection protocol was incomplete. The lawsuit claims there is autopsy evidence suggesting that the drugs used in lethal injection make people feel as though they are drowning and being "burned alive". In August 2021, United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma Judge Stephen Friot ruled that because Jones and five other inmates had not specified an alternative execution method to lethal injection, they could no longer be included in the lawsuit. On October 15, 2021, United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that the lower court made a mistake by dismissing the six prisoners from the lawsuit.

On March 1, 2021, Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater wrote a letter to the parole board objecting to the commutation and accusing Jones and his attorneys of "a coordinated and alarmingly successful campaign of misinformation, spurred by media frenzy, which is specifically targeted to manipulate and mislead the public through dissemination of half-truths and, frequently, outright lies," and discussing what he described as Jones' "extensive criminal history," the evidence and testimony in the case, the new DNA evidence from the bandana, and reasons for doubting the alibi offered by Jones' family, as well as Littlejohn and Berry's claims to have heard Jordan confess. Jones' legal team responded, saying that "much of what is in this letter is uncharged accusations...He ignores that fact that three people came forward and said that Christopher Jordan confessed to them that he committed the murder."

In April 2021, Jones wrote a letter to the parole board stating "I did not kill Mr. Howell. I did not participate in any way in his murder; and the first time I saw him was on television when his death was reported." In this letter, Jones said that Christopher Jordan spent the night at Jones' house on the evening of the murder and that Jordan planted evidence framing Jones for the murder. Oklahoma County is among the five worst counties in the U.S. in terms of wrongful capital convictions.

On September 13, 2021, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board held a commutation hearing and expressed doubt about Jones' guilt. After several hours of testimony the board voted 3–1 in favor of commuting Jones' sentence to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Board members Adam Luck, Kelly Doyle, and Larry Morris voted in favor of clemency and Richard Smothermon voted against clemency. Board member Scott Williams recused himself from the vote due to an ongoing investigation of the board. The Board voted again in October and received the same results. The Board's decision was a recommendation for the Governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt. On November 1, 2021, Jones spoke before the Board at a clemency hearing and argued his innocence.

On September 20, 2021, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals set execution dates for Jones and six other inmates on death row. Jones was scheduled for execution on November 18, 2021. Jones' attorney, along with other attorneys for people on death row, filed a request for a stay of execution. The attorneys argued that they had an agreement with former Attorney General of Oklahoma, Michael J. Hunter, that no executions would take place while they awaited an upcoming trial in February. The trial challenges whether Oklahoma's execution protocol, a three-drug cocktail, is legal. On October 27, 2021, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals released a decision staying the executions of Jones and another man on death row, John Marion Grant. The current attorney general, John M. O'Connor, appealed and asked the court to vacate the stays. The United States Supreme Court overturned the stays of execution for Jones and Grant; Grant was executed on October 28, 2021.

On November 3, 2021, the Oklahoma Legislative Black Caucus held a press conference asking Governor Stitt to grant Jones clemency. Members of the caucus, including Jason Lowe and Monroe Nichols, met with Jones a few months prior to the press conference.

On November 11, 2021, five Republican lawmakers, John Talley, Logan Phillips, Kevin McDugle, Garry Mize, and Preston Stinson released a joint statement asking Governor Stitt to accept the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board's clemency recommendation. Mercedes Schlapp, Matt Schlapp, and the American Conservative Union also asked Stitt to grant Jones clemency. More than 6 million people signed a change.org petition requesting that Jones not be executed.

On November 18, 2021, Governor Stitt commuted Jones' sentence to life without parole less than four hours before his scheduled execution. As a condition of clemency, Stitt ordered that Jones will never be eligible for a further commutation or pardon for the rest of his life. It is rare for death row inmates to be granted clemency by an Oklahoma governor, with only four having occurred prior to Jones; three by Brad Henry and one by Frank Keating.

In 2020, Roderick Wesley contacted Jones' defense team stating that he had been friends with Christopher Jordan when they were both inmates at Brickeys. Wesley wrote that Jordan would occasionally say on the basketball court, "I'll f--- you up like I did that man," which Wesley wrote off as trash talk, but that in the fall of 2009, Jordan "just decided to spill his guts to me." Wesley claimed that Jordan said, "My co-defendant is on death row behind a murder I committed." Wesley was unsure what to make of this admission until he chanced to see an ABC News special about Julius Jones.

In 2018, Jones was featured in the first season of The Last Defense, an American documentary series that explores and exposes flaws in the American justice system. The episodes about Jones focused on evidence attorneys failed to present in court regarding Jones' co-defendant Christopher Jordan. Since the documentary aired, Kim Kardashian, J. Cole, and Stephen Curry have expressed support for Jones, and Kardashian visited Jones in prison. Jones' story was also featured on a 2020 podcast episode featuring Kardashian and a 2021 episode of The Late Late Show with James Corden. On July 15, 2020, Jones was featured on an episode of 20/20 titled The Last Defense: Julius Jones – A Special Edition of 20/20. On May 19, 2022, Jones' story was featured on Episode 6 of The Kardashians, 'This is a Life or Death Situation', focusing on Kim Kardashian's successful efforts to obtain a commutation of his death sentence.

In 2017, a DNA test identified Jones's DNA on the red bandana that was found wrapped around the murder weapon in his family's home. Jones's public defender stated that the test only matched 7 out of 21 genetic markers and was not up to law enforcement standards.

After this decision, David McKenzie noticed that one of the members of the three-judge panel who reviewed Jones' appeal was Jerome Holmes, and alerted Jones' current lawyers that in 2002, Holmes, then a federal prosecutor, had written a newspaper editorial defending the verdict and sentence in Jones' case, and mocking McKenzie's claims of racial bias. Jones' defense team filed a petition for rehearing before a new panel of judges on the grounds that Holmes should have recused himself. Holmes recused himself from consideration of the motion, and the two other members of the original panel vacated the previous decision and granted rehearing before a new panel of three randomly chosen judges. On November 10, 2015, the new panel again denied Jones relief, finding that he had failed to demonstrate that the OCCA's decision was contrary to clearly established federal law or based on an unreasonable determination of the facts. The Supreme Court denied review on October 3, 2016.

In 2014, Christopher Jordan was released after serving fifteen years in prison for his complicity in Howell's murder.

Jones conceded that "[t]he record shows that [McKenzie] looked into Littlejohn's claim and made an informed, strategic decision not to call him as a witness" and that the OCCA's resolution of his claim of ineffectiveness for McKenzie's failure to call Littlejohn as a witness "was likely reasonable." Jones argued, however, that the OCCA should not have applied this same analysis to McKenzie's failure to seek corroboration of Littlejohn's statement. Jones construed the OCCA as having found that McKenzie had rendered reasonable assistance by making an informed strategic decision not to seek corroboration. The circuit court exercised its discretion to entertain this argument although it would ordinarily have been considered as waived because it was not raised before the district court. The 10th Circuit interpreted the OCCA as having rejected this claim of ineffective assistance because the failure to discover what Berry had purportedly overheard did not prejudice Jones, regardless of whether it represented deficient performance on McKenzie's part. The court found that "the OCCA quite clearly concluded that there was not a reasonable probability that the result of Jones's trial would have been different had McKenzie conducted further investigation, discovered Berry's testimony, and presented testimony from both Littlejohn and Berry at trial" and that "this conclusion ... was entirely reasonable."

Jones filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma on November 3, 2008, which was denied on May 21, 2013. In these proceedings, Jones sought relief under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which required him to demonstrate that the adjudication of his case in Oklahoma courts had resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States, or had resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the state court proceeding. These claims were eligible for review only if Jones had exhausted the remedies available in Oklahoma courts before seeking federal review. Jones argued seven distinct grounds for relief.

Jones petitioned the OCCA for rehearing on February 16, 2006, arguing that the court had not applied the proper standard of review to the sufficiency of evidence in support of the aggravating circumstances; that the court had failed to address his claim that the State had improperly relied on his non-violent felony convictions to support the continuing threat aggravator; and that the court's resolution of his claim for ineffective assistance on account of McKenzie's failure to call his family as alibi witnesses was in conflict with the precedent of Chambers v. Mississippi. The OCCA granted rehearing but denied relief on March 14, 2006, concluding with respect to these arguments that the different standard of review would not have resulted in a different conclusion about the existence of the aggravating circumstances; that Jones had waived his claim on the use of the non-violent convictions by failing to develop this argument in his initial petition, and even if he had, the use of these convictions would not have prejudiced him given the other evidence presented of violent crimes he had committed; and that Jones' reliance on Chambers was inapposite, as his accusation that his counsel had "wholly failed" to present defense evidence was "simply wrong," and he and his counsel had received and exercised a "fair opportunity to defend against the State's accusations." The Supreme Court of the United States denied Jones review of the OCCA's decision on October 10, 2006.

Jones filed an application for post-conviction relief on February 25, 2005, which was denied by the OCCA in an unpublished opinion on November 5, 2007. Jones claimed ineffective assistance of trial counsel for McKenzie's failure to investigate whether anyone could corroborate Littlejohn's claim that Jordan had confessed to the murder. Jones submitted affidavits from Littlejohn and from Christopher Berry, an inmate who at the time of the trial was being held in the Oklahoma County Jail on a charge of Child Abuse Murder, whom McKenzie also represented. Berry's affidavit stated that he met Christopher Jordan in the Oklahoma County Jail, where they were housed in the same area of the jail for about two years, and that he overheard Jordan tell an inmate named "Smoke" that "[Jordan] was the actual person who shot the victim in his case," and that "because [Jordan] was the first to talk to the police, he was getting a deal and would not get the death penalty" while "his partner in the case was charged with capital murder." According to Berry, Jordan liked to brag about shooting Howell. Berry admitted that he "didn't tell [his] attorney, David McKenzie," about this, but stated that he "did try to talk to him about it," and "Mr. McKenzie didn't seem interested in it." The OCCA rejected Jones' claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, holding that "Berry suffer[ed] from the same credibility problems that Littlejohn did" and that his statements did not necessarily corroborate Littlejohn's. The OCCA interpreted Berry's claim that Jordan had called Jones "his partner in the case" to mean Jordan had said Jones was involved in the theft of the Suburban but did not shoot Howell, which would conflict with Littlejohn's claim that Jordan had said Jones was not involved in the robbery at all, although Jones argues he might have been called Jordan's "partner" only in the sense that they were charged together. Jones' public defender at the time, David McKenzie, later concurred with Jones that he had given ineffective counsel in a 2008 affidavit and detailed five major failures he made in Jones' trial.

Formal sentencing was held on April 19, 2002. Bass sentenced Jones in accordance with the jury's verdicts and ordered the sentences be served consecutively. Jones' parents commented after the sentencing that "he's innocent," and "they didn't prove nothing." David McKenzie opined that "in a death-penalty case of a black man accused of killing a rich white guy, I don't think there is any possible way you could have gotten a fair trial in Oklahoma County. I think the verdict proved it." District Attorney Wes Lane commented that "we don't pursue the prosecution of cases in which we believe someone is innocent" and that he was "sorry that the lawyers for Julius Jones have decided to take out their disappointment on honest, hard-working jurors who did their best to come to the verdict they believe in." Jerome Holmes, deputy criminal chief in the U.S. attorney's office for the Western District of Oklahoma, wrote a newspaper editorial saying that McKenzie's comments "are not supported by facts" and that "factually unsupported claims of juror racial bias impose significant costs on the criminal justice system." While acknowledging that "racial prejudice still exists in the jury box" and "as an African-American, I am among the first to condemn it," Holmes wrote that "the flawed notion that in order to give a racial minority defendant a fair trial we must gerrymander particular jury panels to ensure that a portion of the jury seated for the trial bears the same racial markers as the defendant ... is antithetical to the concepts of individual freedom that are a hallmark of our great nation; it suggests that, even as to weighty matters involving the liberty or the very life of another, our choices will be regularly controlled by some ill-defined allegiance to the racial groups to which we belong. In 21st century America, there is no room for such thinking, and it should not be strengthened by ill-advised unsupported claims of juror racial bias."

Christopher O'Neal Jordan, Jones' co-defendant, pleaded guilty on October 11, 2001 and agreed to testify against Jones. He was given a life sentence of which all but 30 years were suspended for first-degree murder, and a sentence of 10 years for the conspiracy charge, to be served concurrently. Jones' trial was held February 11–15, 19–22, 25–28, and March 1–4, 2002, with Judge Jerry D. Bass presiding.

Paul Scott Howell, a 45-year-old insurance executive, spent the evening of July 28, 1999 shopping for school supplies and eating ice cream with his two daughters, aged 7 and 9, and his sister, Megan Tobey. At about 9:30 PM, Howell pulled into the driveway of his parents' home in Edmond, Oklahoma, where he was living after separating from his wife several months earlier, in his 1997 GMC Suburban. As Tobey exited the passenger side of the vehicle, she heard a gunshot. Tobey turned to face her brother and saw a young black male, who wore a white T-shirt, a red bandana over his face, and a black stocking cap on his head, standing beside the vehicle's open driver's side door. The man demanded that Howell give him the keys to the Suburban. Tobey pulled the two children out of the back seat and ran with them through her parents' carport. As they ran, she heard someone yelling at her to stop, and a second gunshot. The murderer then left in Howell's Suburban. Howell's parents ran outside and found their son lying in the driveway. Howell was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead at 1:45 AM. The state medical examiner later testified at Jones' trial that Howell died of "a single contact wound," a wound where the gun was pressed against his head when it was fired.

Ladell King testified on February 15 that within 30 minutes after the murder, he saw Jones back the stolen Suburban into a parking space at his apartment complex in northwest Oklahoma City. King said that Jones asked him about calling someone who might buy the vehicle, describing himself as "the middle man." King said Jones was wearing a white T-shirt, a red bandana, and black cotton gloves. Ladell King's girlfriend, Vickson McDonald, testified that she had also seen Jones arrive that night in the Suburban. King's neighbor, Gordon Owens, was also standing outside that night and confirmed that he saw Julius Jones, whom he had met before, standing next to the Suburban talking to King and gesturing towards the vehicle. King testified that the following afternoon, he picked up Jones from his home in his Pontiac Firebird and brought him back to his apartment, where the Suburban had been left overnight. With Jones driving the Suburban and King following in the Firebird, the two went to south Oklahoma City to see Kermit Lottie about buying the vehicle. Because King knew that Lottie did not permit people to bring stolen vehicles directly into his shop, they parked the vehicle at a convenience store called Central Grocery. The jury was shown surveillance video from the store which showed King and Jones entering the business that day. Leaving the Suburban parked outside Central Grocery, both rode to Lottie's shop in the Firebird. King testified that "Kermit said he didn't want it because a body was attached to it," since Lottie had heard on a news broadcast that someone was killed for a Suburban. Around 5:30 PM, King and Jones drove to the gym where Christopher Jordan was playing basketball and told him they had been trying to page him all day, and King and Jordan played basketball for a while. King testified that later that night, Jones and Jordan arrived at his apartment together in Jordan's Cutlass at about 11:00 PM, and they discussed the murder of Paul Howell and what to do with the Suburban. King said that Jones admitted to the shooting, saying, "He said the car pulls up. He saw a little girl waving at him. The door came open and the gun went off." King testified that the next day, Jones called him and talked to him about a police reward for information leading to the arrest of Howell's killer. King testified, "he said he was worth $22,000 and it won't be long." King said that Jones asked if King was going to turn him in, and called himself "a fool for telling [him] I shot the man." King testified that Jones wore his hair in a "low cut" and did not cut his hair between the robbery and his arrest, so that photographs from the time of the arrest which were shown to the jury showed him as he appeared on the night of July 28, 1999.

Ballistics evidence admitted at trial indicated that the bullet removed from Howell's head and a bullet fired into the dashboard of the Suburban were both fired from the handgun found in the attic of the Jones home. Jones' girlfriend, Analiese Presley, testified that Jones had told her prior to Howell's murder that he had a .25 caliber chrome semi-automatic pistol which he kept for protection, and that she had seen such a pistol in his possession in the summer of 1999. She testified that Jones told her that at the time Howell was murdered, he had been somewhere on the south side of Oklahoma City. Presley also testified that at the time, Jones' hair had been "really short."

Anand Lapsi testified that after dinner at the Hideaway Pizza on the night of July 22, 1999, he had gone to his new Mercedes-Benz in the parking lot, where a man wearing a blue bandana over the lower half of his face held a gun to his head and said, "give me the keys. Give me the keys." Lapsi positively identified Jones as the man who robbed him. Police later found the car in the parking lot of Jones' apartment with all of the owner's personal effects missing, and located the keys to the car in the Cutlass shared by Jones and Jordan.

Mark Merchant, the owner of Royal Jewelers at Quail Springs Mall, testified that on July 9, 1999, a black man wearing a red bandana and a stocking cap had put a gun to his head and robbed him of 30 to 40 gold chains valued at $15,000. Merchant could not identify the masked robber, but Christopher Jordan testified that Jones had taken the Cutlass on the day of the robbery and come back with gold chains, stating that he had robbed a jewelry store at Quail Springs Mall. According to Jordan, Jones pawned many of the chains, wore one, and gave another to Presley. Presley confirmed that Jones gave her three or four gold chains but then took them back, and pawn slips record that Jones sold several gold chains in July 1999.

Jones won a partial academic scholarship to the University of Oklahoma but withdrew during his second semester. Jones' family was not in poverty, but Jones committed several acts of larceny and petty theft, which he says he committed in order to obtain things his family could not afford. At the time of the murder of Paul Howell, Jones had prior convictions, based upon guilty pleas, to unlawful use of a fictitious name, false declaration to a pawnbroker, concealing stolen property, and larceny from a retailer. Jones had used the name and birth certificate of another man named Lewis Wayne Richardson to apply for an Oklahoma identification card on September 30, 1998. Jones admitted to stealing four pagers from a Target store on December 9, 1998, that he had concealed a compact disc player he had stolen the same day from a Walmart store, and that he had lied about having ownership of the stolen property for two months when he tried to pawn it. The State also presented evidence at his trial of various unadjudicated acts which included attempting to elude a police officer, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, armed robbery of a jewelry store at Quail Springs Mall, two armed carjackings in July 1999 at the Hideaway Pizza, and a physical altercation with a detention officer. In 2006, Jones pleaded guilty to Robbery with Firearms and Possession of a Firearm After Felony Conviction for a carjacking he committed on July 22, 1999.

The defense argued that Jones' life should be spared because he has an injury to the portion of his brain necessary for impulse control and understanding of consequences. Dr. Stephen Carella, a neuropsychologist, testified for the defense, describing Jones as a "very bright young man and overachiever" with an IQ of 97. Carella said he discovered a mild problem in the left hemisphere of Jones' brain which could be attributed to being hit in the head with a baseball when he was 12, or to a May 5, 1998 traffic accident.

Jones also claimed he had suffered ineffective assistance of appellate counsel in his direct appeal, because his counsel had failed to thoroughly investigate the jurors' backgrounds. During voir dire, the trial court asked if any of the panel had appeared in a court of law under any circumstances as a witness, plaintiff, or defendant. Juror Whitmire's answer was "[t]raffic-related offenses." Jones argued that this answer was "misleading at best" because Whitmire (1) had been a defendant in a 1986 Oklahoma County civil lawsuit; (2) had sought bankruptcy protection in 1989; (3) had been the subject of two emergency protective orders in 1999; and (4) had been convicted several times of Driving Under the Influence, including two felony convictions for that crime in 1984. Jones also presented evidence suggesting that Whitmire embellished or misrepresented the nature of his employment, claiming that he was a physical therapist, when in fact he was a physical therapist's assistant. The OCCA determined that Whitmire's DUI convictions were indeed traffic-related, and that whether his answer was intended to be misleading or untruthful was debatable. In any case, the OCCA found Jones had made no showing that Whitmire was unable to serve as a fair and impartial juror, and with no evidence before the OCCA of when or whether either trial or appellate counsel became aware of this juror's contacts with the legal system, the OCCA could not presume that counsel's failure to bring up these facts represented deficient performance. The OCCA observed that it is possible for trial counsel to have sound strategic reasons for keeping a panelist with a criminal record.

Julius Darius Jones (born July 25, 1980) is an American prisoner and former death row inmate from Oklahoma who was convicted of the July 1999 murder of Paul Howell. His case has received international attention due to claims of innocence and controversy surrounding his trial and conviction. Jones was convicted of the crime on the basis of what the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals later characterized as an "overwhelming" body of evidence consisting of "a co-defendant who directly implicated Jones, eyewitness identification, incriminating statements made by Jones after the crime, flight from police, damning physical evidence hidden in Jones's parents' home, and an interlocking web of other physical and testimonial evidence consistent with the State's theory." Jones and his defense team maintain that he was at home with his family at the time of the murder and that his co-defendant Christopher Jordan is the true perpetrator of the crime, contending that eyewitness descriptions of the killer better describe Jordan than Jones, and noting that three jailhouse informants have said that they have heard Jordan confess to the shooting. Jones was scheduled to be executed on November 18, 2021. However, four hours before his scheduled execution, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt commuted his sentence to life imprisonment without parole.

Jones was born to Madeline Davis-Jones on July 25, 1980, in Oklahoma. He was the second of three siblings and has one younger sister, Antoinette, and one older brother, Antonio. He attended John Marshall High School in Oklahoma City, where he played basketball and football, and graduated in 1998 with a 3.8 grade point average, 11th in his class. Blake and Taylor Griffin's father coached Jones and his friend, Christopher Jordan, who later became his co-defendant in the 1999 crime. Jones has said that he knew Jordan was not a good influence, but wanted to help him.

Police went to King's apartment and found only King's girlfriend, Vickson McDonald, at home. At officers' request, she called King and told him the police were there and would like to speak to him. King went home and provided officers with information about the Paul Howell murder. King told police that he had agreed to help Jones and his friend Christopher Jordan find a buyer for a stolen vehicle. On the night of the murder, Jordan had come to King's apartment driving his own 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass, and Jones had arrived fifteen or twenty minutes later driving Howell's Suburban, and wearing a white T-shirt, a red bandana, a stocking cap, and gloves. Jones warned King not to touch the Suburban and asked him to find someone to buy it. King's neighbor saw Jones and King checking out the Suburban that night. While King was speaking with police, he received a page from Julius Jones and provided police with the phone number, which traced back to Jones' parents' house.