Despite pending federal litigation over the state’s execution protocols - and a recommendation from the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board that Jones’s sentence be commuted to life in prison - Jones is scheduled to die on November 18 for a crime he swears he did not commit. Now Jones faces the danger of a similar fate. Yet officials denied that anything had gone wrong. Witnesses described how he vomited and repeatedly convulsed shortly after the lethal injection began.
Like the previous two men sent into the state’s death chamber - whose botched executions thrust Oklahoma’s dysfunctional capital punishment system into the national spotlight - Grant struggled before he died. A few days earlier, on October 28, Oklahoma had carried out its first execution since 2015, killing a 60-year-old Black man named John Grant by lethal injection.
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“We’re here to free an innocent man on death row,” Smith told me, adding that he wanted to raise awareness about other cases too. It read “Are YOU Willing to Be the Innocent Person Executed?” Standing in the parking lot, Smith propped up a massive green banner featuring Jones’s face.
Others, like Eugene Smith, were new to the cause. They were dressed for warmth, in winter hats, hoodies, and face masks that read “Justice for Julius.” Some, such as Abraham Bonowitz of Death Penalty Action, were veteran anti-death penalty organizers. at the Tabernacle Baptist Church on Oklahoma City’s northeast side. On the day of Julius Jones’s clemency hearing, a crowd began gathering well before 8 a.m.