Guest: Reflections a year after Julius Jones' death sentence was commuted

On Nov. 18, 2021, just hours before Julius Jones was set to be executed by the state of Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt commuted his sentence to life without the possibility of parole for the 1999 murder of a white Oklahoma businessman named Paul Howell. Julius’ case was racially charged from the beginning. Behind the explosive headlines lay systemic failures at every stage of the criminal legal system. These failures have put countless men just like Julius on death rows across the country for crimes they did not commit.

This summer marks 24 years since we believe Julius was wrongly arrested just six days after his 19th birthday. Going all the way back to that fateful day shows how injustice often starts long before a person goes to trial and is wrongly convicted. It starts with racial bias that is embedded deep within our society. For Julius, it began as he was being transferred into a police cruiser, and he said the arresting officer told him, “Run [n-word], I dare you.” Men of color are disproportionately sentenced to death for crimes they didn’t commit. In part, this is because society labels these men as “criminal” and “dangerous” well before a crime is even committed.

The use of a racial slur during Julius’ arrest was just the tip of the iceberg. During jury selection, all of the Black prospective jurors, except for one, were excluded on the grounds that they had criminal histories. Yet, a white juror with two prior felony convictions was allowed to remain. Later, the judge failed to take action after one juror reported another juror saying the trial was a waste of time and “they should just take the [n-word] out and shoot him behind the jail."

Unfortunately, the prosecution had a vengeful focus on Julius rather than on the truth, withholding evidence implicating the individual who — unlike Julius — matched the description of the person who committed the crime.

What Julius experienced and continues to experience is a grave injustice we must never forget. But for men of color caught in our broken carceral system, this nightmare is all too common. Black Oklahomans are overrepresented in the current death row population at over five times the rate of the state population.

“Cowboy” Bob Macy, the district attorney when Julius was arrested, sent more women and men to death row during his tenure than any other U.S. prosecutor at the time. Since then, nearly half of those convictions have been reversed. Many of those whose convictions were vacated are Black people.

Racial disparities are prevalent in the nation’s criminal legal system as a whole, as well. In a recent report released by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, researchers found “[r]acial inequality is not produced by any one stage of the system, but is the combined product of each stage in the sequence.”

For instance, the report discusses how early contacts with the justice system, such as police stops, jails and misdemeanor courts, disproportionately target Black, Latino and Native Americans. Studies on prosecutorial discretion have found Black and Latino defendants are charged more severely than white ones. Prosecutors also are more likely to seek the death penalty in cases involving Black defendants and white victims.

But it doesn't have to be this way. The compiled evidence shows that structural reforms across all stages of the criminal justice system can both address the racial inequalities in the system itself and reduce the disparities present across other aspects of our society. In tandem with policies that address inequalities in health, housing, education and wealth, coordinated reforms can address the feedback loop where inequalities in one area reinforce the disparities present in another.

In the end, Justice for Julius means freeing a man who has spent more than half his life being punished and nearly killed for a crime he maintains he did not commit. But, we also must not forget that justice for all means fixing the broken system that has put Julius and so many others like him in prisons across the country.

Cece Jones-Davis is the founder of the Julius Jones Coalition and director of the Justice for Julius campaign. She is also an ordained minister, speaker, activist and impact strategist.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Julius Jones advocate: Justice for all means fixing broken court system