Man sentenced in 2016 hate crime dies in prison
MCALESTER — A man sentenced to life without parole in prison for fatally shooting his neighbor, Khalid Jabara, in a hate crime in 2016 has died in prison.
Stanley Vernon Majors, 63, was convicted in February and sentenced the following month for firstdegree murder, as well as misdemeanor counts of malicious intimidation and harassment — commonly called Oklahoma’s hate crime law — and threatening an act of violence.
The state Department of Corrections opened an investigation into the deaths of two inmates Wednesday in separate, unrelated incidents at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, where Majors was held.
“He was the gentleman who passed away in the infirmary,” said Matt Elliott, an Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokesman.
Corrections Department officials found Majors dead after midnight Wednesday in an infirmary bed at the maximum-security prison. Elliott declined to say what may have preceded Majors’ move to the infirmary.
The Jabara family, in a statement, said they were aware Majors has died and “are working through the emotions that come with that.”
The news of Majors’ death came one month after the second anniversary of Khalid Jabara’s death. “We continue to work to honor Khalid’s memory, advocating for bail reform, victims’ rights and combating hate,” the Jabara family said in a collective statement. “This news does nothing to change that focus.”
Since Khalid Jabara’s murder, his family has been advocating for legal reforms they argue could have helped protect them. The first is to overhaul the courts’ bond review practices. Second, they think courts should be required to notify victims upon an inmate’s release, having learned that Majors was out on bond only through their own vigilant checks of the courts’ online public records system.
A Tulsa County jury convicted Majors in February 2018 for the killing of Jabara.
Corrections Department officials identified another inmate who died Wednesday at the McAlester facility as Bobby Bailey, 56. Bailey was found dead in his cell around 11:30 a.m. It appeared Bailey had been assaulted, corrections officials said. Bailey’s cellmate is the suspect in the attack.
Bailey was serving a life sentence on a 1986 shooting with intent to kill conviction in Garvin County.