In a clemency hearing on Monday, Julius Jones pleaded his case to the Oklahoma State Pardon and Parole Board. The Oklahoma man is sentenced to death for a murder he says he did not commit and the agency voted 3 to 1 that he not face a death sentence.
Jones was set to be executed for the 1999 murder of Paul Howell in less than three weeks on Nov. 18. When Howell was shot, his sister and two young daughters were present in his parents' driveway.
However, Jones, his attorneys, and high-profile advocates like Kim Kardashian West insisted that he is innocent, CNN reported.
Jones' clemency position states that he, a Black man, has been on death row for a crime that he did not commit for almost two decades because of "fundamental breakdowns in the system tasked with deciding" whether or not he's guilty.
The position calls attention to Jones being assigned ineffective and inexperienced defense attorneys, racial bias among his jury, and alleged prosecutorial misconduct, supporters say.
However, Howell's family and the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office have said that Jones is not innocent as they believe he is guilty of Howell's murder.
Attention was drawn to Jones' case following a 2018 ABC documentary series titled "The Last Defense." The series looked at his case and gathered the support of 6.4 million people who signed a petition asking for the Oklahoma Governor, Kevin Stitt, to prevent his execution.
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In an interview, Jones' younger sister, Antoinette Jones, shared how the support for her brother has impacted her.
"It means the world to me," Antoinette Jones said, CNN reported. "It means that we're not alone anymore. It means that we can kind of breathe a little bit easier, knowing that other people are willing to fight alongside us.
"I appreciate that we have the help now," she said, "because we didn't have that 22 years ago."
The Monday hearing took place before the same parole board that recommended in September Jones' sentence be commuted to life in prison with the possibility of parole, CNN reported.
However, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals set an execution date a week later, resulting in the clemency hearing being scheduled.
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The governor has the final say in whether or not Jones is granted clemency. In a letter to the parole board last month, Stitt said he would base his decision on the clemency hearing, not the previous decision to commute his sentence.
"I am not accepting the Pardon and Parole Board's recommendation to commute the sentence of Julius Jones," Stitt wrote, "because a clemency hearing, not a commutation hearing, is the appropriate venue for our state to consider death row cases."
With the board agreeing Jones should receive clemency, the decision will be up to Governor Stitt as to whether or not he will be executed in the middle of this month.
