Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and this is The Takeaway. We turn now to Oklahoma where Julius Jones is still on death row. In July of 1999, businessman Paul Howell was shot and killed during a carjacking in Edmond, Oklahoma. At the time of the murder, Julius Jones was an honor student at the University of Oklahoma. He was 19 years old, and he had an alibi, which was never presented in court. Instead, Julius Jones was convicted in a trial, where he was defended by an attorney with no prior experience with capital cases.

Jones was sentenced to death. He has now lived more of his life incarcerated and awaiting execution than he's spent as a free person, but Jones has consistently maintained his innocence while the state continues to insist he is guilty. It's worth noting that only two states in the country have executed more people than Oklahoma and that Oklahoma is among the top five worst counties for wrongful convictions. In addition, the state supreme court halted execution six years ago after two brutal executions in 2014.

In January 2014, as Michael Lee Wilson was put to death by lethal injection, he cried out that his whole body was burning. Just a few months later, Clayton Lockett was tortured to death by the state of Oklahoma during a 43-minute botched execution. Julius Jones has exhausted his appeals. On September 13th, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board will hear Julius Jones's request for commutation. With me now is Reverend Cece Jones-Davis, the campaign founder and director of Justice for Julius. Reverend Jones-Davis, welcome.

Reverend Cece Jones-Davis: Thank you so much, Melissa. Thank you for just having us today. We appreciate it.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Absolutely. Tell me how you got involved in the fight to clear Julius's name?

Reverend Cece Jones-Davis: I was living in Oklahoma when the Last Defense, a docu-series that Ms. Viola Davis and Mr. Julius Tennon produced for ABC when it aired, and that was 2018. I'm not from Oklahoma. When I moved there, I had never heard anything about Julius Jones, but when I saw this documentary, I was so many things. I was enraged. I was heartbroken. There was just no way morally that I was going to be able to live in Oklahoma, pay taxes in Oklahoma, and not say something, not do something, and so I contacted his attorneys who are based in Arizona, and his family, the Jones family who are still in Oklahoma City. Here we are today, three or four years later, with a massive movement that I believe God has just really blessed.

Melissa Harris-Perry: The state of Oklahoma says that this massive movement is a massive misinformation and disinformation campaign, how do you respond to that?

Reverend Cece Jones-Davis: Listen, I think that the state of Oklahoma prides itself in believing that people will continue to believe the words of white men in power over the words of everyday people like me, over the words of poor and incarcerated people like Julius Jones, everyday people like the Jones family. I think people today are a lot smarter and understand that the criminal justice system, not just in Oklahoma, but across the country is broken.

I think Oklahoma has gone to great lengths to silence us, to discredit the things that we have said. I don't know how you discredit three, four individuals who come forward not knowing each other to say another man has confessed to this crime over and over again. I don't know how the state thinks it can discredit that. That's one issue that they have not addressed. These were the problems that were highlighted in the Last Defense. I do want to invite people to watch it at justiceforjulius.com.

You can watch what I watched and feel the rage and understand why so many of us are passionate about this. Julius did not have a proper defense. Julius had an attorney who passed away right before trial, and so he was given public defenders who were overwhelmed and underqualified, who had never tried a capital case a day in their lives. One of the attorneys on the team had just passed the bar exam. These people are on the Last Defense saying, "Listen, we were well over our heads."

These folks did not call a single witness to the stand. When it was their turn, Melissa, in court, they literally stood up and said, "We rest," and sat back down. They did not call an alibi, which was the members of the Jones family who say that Julius was sitting right there on the sofa with them, eating spaghetti and cornbread and a birthday cookie that night, watching the news about the shooting. They did not present-- One, they did not cross-examine well. They just did not do their job at all.

As a result, largely, a man is sitting today on death row for the last 22 years. Julius did not have a jury of his peers. There was one person of color on that jury. Also, some years later, a white juror came forward to say that another white juror at the time of the trial said, "Let's just take this N-word to the back of the court and shoot him. This is a waste of our time." That juror remained on the jury and, of course, voted for his conviction and for his death. There are so many issues with Julius's case. Julius didn't fit the description.

The only witness who was the sister to the victim says that this was an African-American man with a bandana across his face, a skully on his head, and at least a half an inch of hair hanging from underneath the cap. There are pictures that show nine days before the crime, Julius had a very close cut, not enough hair to pick up-- I mean, close to his head cut. He didn't have enough hair to stick from underneath a cap, but his co-defendant, Christopher Jordan, the man who has confessed over and over again did have braids, enough braid to stick from underneath the cap. All of this has been just obviously really, really troubling to me and thousands of people across this country.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I can hear the distress in your voice. How is Julius feeling now as he's facing this kind of appeal of last resort to the commutation board?

Reverend Cece Jones-Davis: I think Julius is feeling really hopeful. He is so overwhelmed by the amount of support that he has gotten over the last few years. He's so grateful. He's looking toward the future. He's able now to at least have a dream about what his life could potentially be after all of this if it goes the way that we want it to go and that it needs to go. I'm looking forward to Julius having an opportunity to talk to young kids, to mentor. That's really important to him.

That's something he's actually been doing from death row for many years, mentoring kids. He's hopeful. We are all, the folks who are working on the same, we're cautiously optimistic. No death row inmate in Oklahoma has ever received the commutation hearing. This is historical and his own right, but we need the Pardon and Parole Board members, those five human beings, and then the governor, Governor Stitt, to look at the merits of this and to say enough is enough and to bring Julius home to his mom and dad.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Reverend Cece Jones-Davis, the campaign founder and director of Justice for Julius. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for sharing the story behind the movement to free Julius Jones. Please know we will continue to report on the story and to keep our eyes on it. Thank you for joining us.

Reverend Cece Jones-Davis: Thank you so much for having me.

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