By Patrick B. McGuigan, Editor
Julius Jones is harmless. He must not ever be executed.
He deserves not solely commutation within the quick time period, however a discovering of precise innocence in the long term.
His listening to earlier than the Pardon and Parole (P&P) Board is ready for Sept. 13 at 10 a.m. Some dramatics linked with the efforts of former Lawyer Common Mike Hunter and Oklahoma County District Lawyer David Prater (who will not be in search of reelection) should not detract from the sturdy case for precise innocence within the case of Julius Jones.
Final 12 months, state Rep. Kevin McDugle, R-Damaged Arrow, laid out the case for everlasting reforms in Oklahoma’s dying penalty provisions.
He contributed knowledge in supporting an Interim Examine that included critical examination of suggestions first made within the Oklahoma Dying Penalty Assessment Fee’s historic report.
In the midst of that Interim Examine, McDugle made a robust case for the precise innocence of Richard Glossip.
Someway, I had missed his March 3 letter to Governor Kevin Stitt and members of the Pardon and Parole Board. He strongly inspired commutation of the dying sentence going through Julius Jones. McDugle wrote that with commutation Oklahoma might “keep away from a grave miscarriage of justice.”
He mirrored, “I’ve usually stated that, if Oklahoma goes to hold out executions, it should do them proper. At a minimal, which means guaranteeing that each prisoner on dying row has acquired a good trial and that no compelling proof exists to name into query their guilt.”
Rep. McDugle’s well-sustained argument is price quoting at size:
“Within the case of Julius Jones, I imagine we’re falling in need of that threshold on each fronts. Concerning his trial, an under-prepared and overwhelmed protection staff didn’t current Mr. Jones’ alibi and failed to indicate the jury images that point out Mr. Jones didn’t match the eyewitness description of the shooter. In the meantime, the jury was by no means informed that the prosecution’s star witness, co-defendant Christopher Jordan, was being provided a diminished sentence to testify towards Mr. Jones. Every considered one of these developments could have provided the ‘cheap doubt’ Mr. Jones wanted to keep away from conviction if they’d been offered to a jury.
“Moreover, new proof uncovered by Mr. Jones’ protection staff and documented by each ‘The Frontier’ and the ‘Washington Put up’ helps the likelihood that Mr. Jones is harmless and has been wrongfully imprisoned by the state for practically twenty years. The truth that a number of males, with no data of one another and no ties to Mr. Jones, have individually come ahead to reveal that Christopher Jordan has brazenly bragged about killing Paul Howell and framing his co-defendant, is a revelation that can’t be ignored. Nevertheless, one feels in regards to the dying penalty, it appears unimaginable to help the execution of 1 man for homicide when one other man has confessed on a number of events to committing that very same homicide.
“For all these causes, I urge you to conduct a critical and fair-minded evaluation of Mr. Jones’ case. Having reviewed the proof out there within the public document, I’m assured that you will notice match to commute his sentence and keep away from a grave miscarriage of justice.”
The McDugle letter ought to be studied by those that nonetheless help Oklahoma executions, however notably by those that think about the Jones case “Exhibit A” within the case towards the method as practiced in Oklahoma.
Dale Baich and his colleague Amanda Bass have battled lengthy and onerous for Jones.
In a Might 11 letter to Tom Bates, now the manager director on the P&P Board, Baich argued towards Hunter’s try to intervene towards Jones. (Partaking in cheap hypothesis, it might not be shocking if Jones’ legal professionals transfer to strike a protest letter Hunter, now former A.G., entered within the Jones commutation course of.
Baich vigorously opposes a plan to forestall Julius Jones from addressing the P&P Board on September 13, explicitly confronting the assertion Jones had two “misconducts”.
Baich relates that in 2023, “we despatched a letter to Scott Crowe, Director of the Oklahoma Division of Corrections explaining why the allegations of misconduct are unfounded. …
[T]he two incidents involved the alleged possession of a cellphone charger and an alleged unauthorized convention name.”
From Baich: “March 6, 2023: Mr. Jones was strip-searched and positioned semi-naked in a bathe whereas his property was confiscated, and his cell searched. He was written up for allegedly having a cellphone charger in his possession (however no cellphone). The cellphone charger was by no means proven to Mr. Jones regardless of his request. As a substitute, he was proven a grainy photocopy of {a photograph} of the alleged cellphone charger that’s utterly indiscernible. We requested all documentation pertaining to this incident, together with a video of the search. Our request was basically ignored. We got solely one other copy of the identical undecipherable photocopy, and the video of the search was not offered to us. Beneath the circumstances, we don’t imagine there may be any proof or foundation to characterize this unsupported allegation as a misconduct.”
Persevering with, for April 22, 2023: “Mr. Jones was written up for allegedly collaborating in an ‘unauthorized convention name on February 28, 2023 (with no clarification as to why the write-up occurred nearly two months later). That assertion will not be true. On the contrary, Mr. Jones had a certified name along with his sister, throughout which she put him on speaker cellphone so he could possibly be heard by different individuals who have been within the room with Mr. Jones’ sister.”
Baich asserts – and I agree – neither asserted occasion “is predicated on any precise proof. The timing, lack of transparency, and the Division of Corrections’ refusal to reply to our cheap requests is troubling. If these alleged misconducts are going to be thought of by the Board, it ought to solely be based mostly on a full consideration of all alleged proof, which, to this point, has been withheld from us.”
(Corrections has additionally asserted Jones had dangerous leads to a drug screening – however the case for that’s so weak it deserves mere point out, not critical consideration.)
Baich expressed – and I agree – “that these alleged misconducts weren’t issued as a pretext to retaliate towards Mr. Jones and prejudice his potential to get a full and truthful listening to earlier than the Board.” Additional, he challenged an assertion that Corrections can preserve Jones from the commutation listening to due to the place he’s serving his sentence: “There isn’t a provision within the Code, nor are we conscious of any authority, that may permit Mr. Jones to be excluded from showing merely as a result of he’s housed in a maximum-security jail.”
In his letter to Bates, Baich (no shrinking violet, for which I’m grateful) studies, “You observe that an investigator is presently engaged on a report on Mr. Jones case for the Board. If the investigator wants any further info from Mr. Jones, please have the investigator attain out on to us as counsel, relatively than going by means of jail employees.
Denied entry to prosecution information (as soon as promised by Prater), Baich notes that the Oklahoma Dying Penalty Assessment Fee really helpful, “All Oklahoma district attorneys’ workplaces and the Workplace of the Lawyer Common ought to be required to permit open-file discovery in any respect levels of a capital case, together with in the course of the direct attraction, state post-conviction evaluation, federal habeas corpus evaluation, and any clemency proceedings.”
Baich’s letter was copied to Kyle Counts, Common Counsel for the P&P board, Adam Luck, Board Chair, and members C. Alien McCall, Larry Morris, Kelley Doyle, and Scott Williams.
Initially set for June, the long-anticipated listening to has already slipped into the autumn. Pressures on the board (together with introduced investigations of members) smack of inappropriate stress.
Some surprise if D.A. Prater is following the 2013 playbook develop in a earlier spherical of stress on the board.
The unwillingness to give up information promised up to now raises many questions.
If the withheld proof is a slam dunk, if they’re so certain of the contents, why not share the knowledge with protection legal professionals and most of the people?
There are some who wait on federal courts to indicate up, like Deus Ex Machina from historic Greek performs, to rescue the state from the worst abuses of the dying penalty course of. However that isn’t the job of the judiciary.
Elected representatives and public officers would greatest serve the state by ending the discredited system of capital punishment as truly practiced.
In need of that, accountable gamers in our state authorities ought to no less than work by means of the method to take the worst circumstances off the desk – proper now, or no less than this 12 months.
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