Just a few days following the horrifying last moments of John Marion Grant’s execution in late October, in a 3-1 vote, the Oklahoma State Pardon and Parole Board granted clemency to another death row inmate: Julius Jones, who’s been on death row for over 20 years.
Despite clemency and the fact that capital punishment is at an all-time low in the nation, Jones’ fate remains in the hands of Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who has yet to weigh in.
Jones is scheduled to be executed on Nov. 18, and as Robert Dunham, executive director of the nonpartisan organization Death Penalty Information Center told Daily Kos, clemency sometimes does get granted in exceptional cases and Jones’ case is certainly exceptional.
We spoke with Dunham about Jones’ case and more. We wanted to learn about capital punishment and the death penalty and clear up the misinformation that surrounds the topic.
Wednesday, Nov 17, 2021 · 8:31:47 PM +00:00 · Rebekah Sager
Julius Jones’ family and supporters are pushing hard Wednesday for Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt to make a decision on clemency. Students across the Oklahoma City metro area walked out of class in support of Jones and celebs such as Kim Kardashian and Los Angeles Lakers star, Russell Westbrook joined the global outcry to stop Jones’ scheduled Nov. 18 execution.
European Union’s ambassador to the U.S. wrote a letter to the governor calling on him to commute Jones’ sentence and a petition against the execution has garnered more than 6 million signatures,
according to the Independent.
The ambassadors of France, Belgium, and Denmark have also joined the EU call for clemency.
French ambassador Philippe Etienne tweeted: “Like the whole of the #EU, France is against the death penalty and for its universal abolition. @EUintheUS, we support your letter.”
His deputy, Aurélie Bonal, added: “Through its resolute commitment to universal abolition, France has become recognized as one of the main States involved in combating the #deathpenalty. France supports @EUintheUS‘s letter addressed to @GovStitt respectfully requesting him to grant clemency to #JuliusJones.”
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Americans are conflicted in their feelings about the death penalty. Although more people in the nation favor than oppose it—60% of U.S. adults favor it for people convicted of murder, including 27% who strongly favor it, according to a new Pew Research Center survey—11 states have abolished the death penalty this century, and no new states have added it in that time.
“We now have 34 states that have either abolished the death penalty or have not carried out an execution in more than a decade,” Dunham tells Daily Kos. “Twenty-three states now prohibit capital punishment and another three states—in which it is lawful—have a gubernatorial moratorium on carrying it out. That's a majority of states and a majority of the U.S. population.”
Dunham adds that U.S. voters are also electing more reform prosecutors with promises never to seek the death penalty, or to use it much more sparingly than their predecessors.
“There is now no state in New England that authorizes the death penalty,” Dunham says. “In fact, you can now enter the country at the Canadian border of Maine and travel all the way to the Cumberland Gap; the border of Virginia and Tennessee, without entering a state that has the death penalty. And if you go down the Atlantic coast, that means from Maine to North Carolina, from the northern tip of Maine to the northern tip of North Carolina, there are no states that still have the death penalty.”
But, of course, there are states that still employ capital punishment. And in those that do, Dunham says, there’s a clear line you can draw from slavery to lynching to Jim Crow segregation to modern mass incarceration. These states have the fewest procedural protections against wrongful capital convictions and wrongful death sentences. They also have significant racial disparities in capital charging practices and capital sentencing practices and have courts that are more likely to refuse to review claims of unconstitutional trials or unconstitutional death sentences and instead impose procedural hurdles.
Since 1976, people of color have accounted for 43% of total executions and make up over half of the inmates who are currently scheduled to be executed. In Texas, Black people make up less than 13% of the population yet represent 44.2% of death row inmates. Nationally, Black Americans make up 42% of death row inmates.
From now until the end of 2022, there are 7 white, 6 Black, 2 Latinx, and 1 Asian person scheduled for execution. But four of the six Black Americans are in Ohio, where it is doubtful that executions will take place next year. For the entire list click here.
“The Florida Supreme Court has systematically reversed protections that were available to capital defendants and death row prisoners. With a state attorney general who is actively fighting DNA testing for two death row prisoners who've asserted their innocence for 45 years,” Dunham says.
“In states and counties committed to fairness and criminal legal reform, the death penalty is largely abolished or not used. States that are the least committed to fairness have the longest history of the use of the legal system as an instrument of racial and social hierarchy and that’s where we see the death penalty most active,” he says.
Dunham says the data shows that the death penalty doesn’t affect murder rates.
Based on 31 years of FBI data, on average, homicide rates were higher in states that had the death penalty than in states that didn't.
Dunham explained that the rates at which police officers were killed were higher in states that had the death penalty than in states that didn't. But the trends in terms of murder rates going up or murder rates going down or murder rates being stable were virtually indistinguishable. “So having the death penalty didn't did make it less likely.”
He added, “States with the lowest rate of police killings tended to be in states that recently abolished the death penalty.
In other words, murders of police officers didn’t drop because of repeal. The repeal was more likely because the comparatively low rates of killings of law enforcement defused it as a political issue and allowed the legislatures to look at the facts concerning the way the death penalty is administered.”
One question that Daily Kos was particularly interested in exploring was what Dunham would like potential jurors on a capital punishment case to know should they be selected to serve.
Dunham says that the jury selection process in and of itself tends to be a problem in the U.S., with jurors of color, women, and people with strong religious beliefs against the death penalty being disproportionately excluded from selection. Leaving juries primarily white and male.
“I say listen carefully to the evidence and separate it out from the rhetoric. Prosecutors will try to inflame the jury by attempting to dehumanize or demonize the defendant because it’s not natural to kill. Prosecutors attempt to paint the defendant as a deviant monster who needs to be put down. You have to recognize that that is a diversionary tactic. If the case warrants the death penalty, then it's something that a juror would consider without that kind of inflammatory rhetoric and a reason to doubt the prosecution's case.
“I would also say to the juror, take a look at all the evidence in the case and ask yourself, would you reach this same judgment if the defendant were a different race? And the victim was a different race,” Dunham says.
The day before Jones’ scheduled execution in Oklahoma, another man by the name of David Neal Cox is set to be executed in Mississippi. Cox, 50, pleaded guilty in 2012 to killing his wife, Kim, in 2010 in the northern Mississippi town of Sherman.
Dunham says this is the first execution in that state in nine years.
Cox has waived his appeal rights. ”Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 through 2019, at least 149 defendants have been “volunteers” [meaning they have also waived their rights to an appeal]—approximately 10% of all executions,” Dunham tells Daily Kos.
Mississippi is still facing a lawsuit filed in 2015 by the Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center on behalf of two inmates. The suit argues that Mississippi's lethal injection protocol is inhumane.
Jones is currently being held in solitary confinement. Every second that goes by brings him closer to being executed for a crime he didn’t commit.