Kim Kardashian West reminds her millions followers that Julius Jones has still not been granted clemency.
For a while now, Kim Kardashian West has been leveraging her voice to advocate for the wrongfully-accused. She went as far as pursuing a law degree in order to gain a better understanding the system she is working within and the power she has to change it. She is now calling attention to the case Julius Jones, a death row inmate in Oklahoma.
On Saturday (Mar. 7), Kardashian tweeted a video produced by The Black Wall Street Times based in Tulsa. “It features men in the community reading portions Julius’s clemency petition that is pending before the Oklahoma Board Pardons and Parole.” The petition, which was filed back in October, pleaded for his death sentence to be converted to prison time. The courts have not reached a final consensus on whether to grant Jones clemency or not, but he has been kept alive largely due to the community movement that has rallied behind him.
Jones and his supporters are arguing that his 2002 conviction was a result a racist juror. Jones was convicted the 1999 murder 45-year-old Paul Howell, who was fatally shot in the driveway his parents’ home in Edmond, Oklahoma. At the time, In 1998, Jones was a freshman honour student on scholarship at the University Oklahoma. After finding out in 2017 that a juror used a racial slur to refer to Jones during his trial, Jones filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court highlighting the racial bias in his sentencing. This appeal was rejected last April. Now that Jones has exhausted all his resources, his fate relies on all the voices fighting on his behalf.