Oklahoma governor grants clemency to convicted killer, halting his execution

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt commuted the death sentence of Julius Jones on Thursday to life in prison without parole, hours before his scheduled execution.

The ruling came after attorneys for Jones filed an emergency, eleventh-hour request that the state hold off until Stitt had weighed in.

Jones, convicted in the 1999 shooting of businessman Paul Howell during a carjacking, has steadfastly maintained his innocence. The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted in September to commute his death sentence and then voted on Nov. 1 to recommend clemency.

That decision was ultimately up to Stitt, who has met with Jones’ family and lawyers, but has kept quiet about his decision, according to the Associated Press.

“After prayerful consideration and reviewing materials presented by all sides of this case, I have determined to commute Julius Jones’ sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” Stitt said in a statement Thursday afternoon.

Jones and his supporters say a high school friend who has already served 15 years and is now out of prison pulled the trigger. Jones, 41, has been on death row for two decades.

Jones’ case had drawn public visibility from numerous celebrities, including Kim Kardashian, who tweeted a series of statements after the governor’s action.

“Thank you so much, Governor Stitt for commuting Julius Jones’ sentence to life without parole and stopping his execution today,” she said.

She added that she’d spent much of the previous day on the phone with him between his meetings with lawyers and family members — all virtual, she said, since visits were all noncontact.

“While I was on the phone with him, somebody came in the room to try to give him the anti-anxiety meds that you usually are forced to take before you are executed so that you can be more calm about the fact that you are about to be executed,” Kardashian tweeted. “However, Julius refused because he said he has a clear conscience and that gives him peace knowing he is innocent and did not want to be drugged up.”

The governor’s order decrees that Jones “shall not be eligible to apply for or be considered for a commutation, pardon or parole for the remainder of his life.”

“Governor Stitt took an important step today towards restoring public faith in the criminal justice system by ensuring that Oklahoma does not execute an innocent man,” Jones’ attorney Amanda Bass said in a statement. “While we had hoped the Governor would adopt the Board’s recommendation in full by commuting Julius’ sentence to life with the possibility of parole in light of the overwhelming evidence of Julius’s innocence, we are grateful that the Governor has prevented an irreparable mistake.”