Julius Jones was on death row for 19 years. 19 years he has been on death row, for a crime many people believe he did not commit. Of course, the evidence from 1999 could have been tampered with due to the time period (O.J. Simpson is a classic example), yet the trial from 2002 declared Jones guilty of killing a business person named Paul Howell.
Jones was on an academic scholarship at the University of Oklahoma, and was “a promising student-athlete”. He was soon arrested for a carjacking crime, although multiple witnesses say that he was at home, away from when the crime took place.
This alibi was not given during the trial for Julius Jones, and many experts state the cause of the lack of commitment to save Julius was due to ongoing racism. In fact, out of the 12 juries who were asked to judge the case, 11 were white.
One of the jurors in fact made profane and racist comments about Jones, but was not punished.
Jones has spent more than half his life in prison, and is scheduled to be executed. Oklahoma, led by Governor Stitt, is planning on having seven members on death row be executed via lethal injection. These are Oklahoma’s first lethal injection executions since a pair of “botched” doses that caught national attention. His date has been set for November 18th.
The high-profile prisoner has had mountains of support from celebrities and the public alike, most notably fashionista Kim Kardashian, wife of Kanye West. A change.org petition has reached more than 6.4 million signatures, one of the largest petitions ever on the website’s history.
Let’s free Julius Jones. As the old adage goes, he is innocent until proven guilty.
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