"I have spent the past 20 years on death row for a crime I did not commit, did not witness and was not at."
"As God is my witness, I was not involved in any way in the crimes that led to Howell being shot and killed," Jones said in the report, according to ESPN. Jones has continued to adamantly maintain his innocence. “I was tried by a jury that included at least one racist, and I never had a chance.” “(The juror said the case) was a waste of time and ‘they should just take the n- out and shoot him behind the jail,” the clemency report said. Jones defense team has also said that one of the jurors on this trial-Jerry Brown-had made racist comments about Jones. “While being transferred from an Oklahoma City police car to and Edmond police car, and officer removed my handcuffs and said: ‘Run, n-, I dare you.’ I stood frozen, knowing that if I moved, I would be shot and killed.” “The officers were high-fiving one another and told me: ‘You know you’re gonna fry,” the report said. Jones has said that after he was arrested, he wasn’t given the option to put on a shirt or shoes and was dragged into a waiting police car, according to his clemency report obtained by the OU Daily. In the years since the trial, concerns have emerged about possible racial bias on the part of both law enforcement officers and a member of the jury. “There was a lot of investigation that did not take place and the cross examination of the state’s witnesses was not very robust,” he said.Ī jury convicted Jones in 2002 and sentenced him to death. The family was just sort of hanging out that evening.”Īfter the prosecutors made their case, Jones’ defense attorney at the time rested their case without ever calling a witness to corroborate Jones' alibi.īaich contends the initial defense “put on no case.” “His parents, sister, and brother say that he was at home that evening,” Baich said, who took on the case in 2016 to help Jones with his appeal for clemency. Jones has always maintained that on the night of the crime, he was at home with his family. One of the witnesses was never interviewed and the other was dismissed by the defense counsel. “(He said) he would get out of prison after serving 15 years of a 30-year sentence and guess what? He did,” Baich said. Two other confidential informants also testified in the case against Jones in exchange for deals in their own cases, Baich said.Ī gun and red bandana were found in an upstairs room in Jones’ parents' house however, Jordan had spent the night with Jones’ family and stayed in that room the night after the crime, Baich said.īaich also said that two inmates in the county jail-who did not know each other-each told authorities that Jordan had allegedly bragged to them about setting Jones up for the crime. However, Baich said that Jordan had probably made “six or seven different statements” to police about the crime. Howell to his home and that Julius got out of the car, went up to the window to the take the car and shot Mr. “What Chris testified to was that he and Julius were out driving around looking for a Suburban to carjack and that they followed Mr. Jones’ codefendant in the case, Chris Jordan, would later testify against Jones in exchange for the state dropping the death penalty in his own case. His sister, Megan Tobey, witnessed the shooting and described her brother’s killer as a young black man wearing a stocking cap and a red bandana over his face. Howell had been shot in the head while sitting in his GMC Suburban outside his parent’s house on July 28, 1999. Jones-a star high school athlete and student at the University of Oklahoma-had just turned 19 when he was awakened in the summer of 1999 and dragged out of bed and arrested for the murder of 45-year-old businessman Paul Howell, according to the release.