![]() ![]() Julius Jones' case is receiving national attention this week because he has applied for a commutation as a final legal recourse before execution. Last March, Prater asked Luck to recuse himself from Julius’ case, claiming that Luck’s 2019 Twitter thread explaining the process of reviewing Jones’ commutation application showed “personal bias.” Luck’s first tweet in the thread was a quote tweet of Kim Kardashian directing her followers to ask the Pardon and Parole Board to give “careful and thoughtful consideration” to Jones’ request. “This was clearly a coordinated effort on the part of and his colleagues to begin subverting the Governor’s Board appointees and ultimately influence the case of Julius Jones,” Luck’s lawyer wrote in a court filing. Two weeks later, on July 6, 2020, several district attorneys submitted recusal requests, asking that Luck be removed from the parole board’s consideration of various cases. Īround the same time of McCall’s threats to Bickley, Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater, whose office tried Jones’ case, filed an open records request asking for all communications from board members that reference phrases including, “Commutation,” “Commute,” “Conflict of interest,” “Criminal Justice Reform,” “Death penalty,” “Draconian,” “God,” “Jesus,” “Julius,” and “Julius Jones.” Bickley requested a leave of absence over what he internally described as “threats to criminalize my public service” and resigned weeks later, The Frontier reported. In June 2020, then-board member and former district court judge Allen McCall threatened to seek criminal charges against then-executive director Steven Bickley unless Bickley took steps to block Jones from getting a commutation hearing before receiving an execution date. And in Jones’ case, the state may make the irreversible mistake of killing a man who was wrongfully convicted.įor more than a year, various Oklahoma state officials have been engaged in a concerted effort to block Jones from getting meaningful review by the state’s Pardon and Parole Board. The ones the state succeeds in killing will, effectively, be human test subjects whatever pain they suffer in death will be collected as evidence at the upcoming trial they will not be alive to participate in. ![]() In spite of all this, Oklahoma is pushing forward with its plan to execute six more people in the coming months. The perpetrators of these intimidating attacks - including at least one who has a conflict of interest in Jones’ case - are undermining the integrity of the state’s clemency process. In this case, the Pardon and Parole Board has come under a series of withering, politically motivated attacks that appear to be intended to deter members from recommending Jones’ life be spared. 18 for a murder that he has, for decades, maintained he did not commit.ĭeath sentences are notoriously difficult to derail in America once they have been handed down - although appeals may go on for years or even decades, the judicial process is engineered to give those on death row little chance to ultimately avoid their fate. Kevin Stitt (R) intervenes, Jones will be executed next week. 1, and again voiced doubts about Jones’ guilt.īut unless Oklahoma Gov. The board recommended clemency for a second time on Nov. And put simply, I have doubts about the case,” board Chairman Adam Luck said. “Personally, I believe in death penalty cases there should be no doubts. 13, Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board recommended in a 3-1 vote that Julius Jones’ death sentence be commuted to life with the possibility of parole, citing evidence of his innocence and his young age at the time of the 1999 crime. (Photo: Illustration: Damon Dahlen/HuffPost Photos: AP) ![]()
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