On November 2, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) submitted a letter to Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt expressing support for the Board of Pardons and Parole’s recommendation to grant clemency to Julius Jones, a Black man on death row who has strong claims of innocence and whose case was infected with racial discrimination.
As an organization that has a long history of representing wrongfully convicted clients, LDF has reviewed Mr. Jones’s case and is deeply concerned that an innocent man faces execution in Oklahoma. The sole eyewitness description of the perpetrator does not match Mr. Jones, but does match the prosecution’s star witness against him, and that other man has admitted to at least four different people that he was the person who shot and killed the victim. Taken together, these facts provide powerful evidence that Mr. Jones is innocent. At a minimum, there is far too much doubt for Mr. Jones to be put to death.
Read LDF’s full letter here.
