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 of the system she is working within and the power she has to change it. She is now calling attention to the case of Julius Jones, a death row inmate in Oklahoma.
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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 of Julius's clemency petition that is pending before the Oklahoma Board of 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 of a racist juror. Jones was convicted of the 1999 murder of 45-year-old Paul Howell, who was fatally shot in the driveway of his parents’ home in Edmond, Oklahoma. At the time, In 1998, Jones was a freshman honour student on scholarship at the University of 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.
