Julius Darius Jones (born July 25, 1980) is an American former death row inmate from Oklahoma who was convicted of the July 1999 murder of Paul Howell. His case has received international attention due to claims of innocence and controversy surrounding his trial and conviction. Jones was convicted of the crime on the basis of what the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals later characterized as an "overwhelming" body of evidence consisting of "a co-defendant who directly implicated Jones, eyewitness identification, incriminating statements made by Jones after the crime, flight from police, damning physical evidence hidden in Jones's parents' home, and an interlocking web of other physical and testimonial evidence consistent with the State's theory."
Jones and his defense team maintain that he was at home with his family at the time of the murder and that his co-defendant Christopher Jordan is the true perpetrator of the crime, contending that eyewitness descriptions of the killer better describe Jordan than Jones, and noting that three jailhouse informants have said that they have heard Jordan confess to the shooting.
Jones was scheduled to be executed on November 18, 2021. However, four hours before his scheduled execution, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt commuted his sentence to life imprisonment without parole.
Early life Jones was born to Madeline Davis-Jones on July 25, 1980, in Oklahoma. He was the second of three siblings and has one younger sister, Antoinette, and one older brother, Antonio. He attended John Marshall High School in Oklahoma City, where he played basketball and football, and graduated in 1998 with a 3.8 grade point average, 11th in his class. Blake and Taylor Griffin's father coached Jones and his friend, Christopher Jordan, who later became his co-defendant in the 1999 crime. Jones has said that he knew Jordan was not a good influence, but wanted to help him.
Jones won a partial academic scholarship to the University of Oklahoma but withdrew during his second semester. Jones' family was not in poverty, but Jones committed several acts of larceny and petty theft, which he says he committed in order to obtain things his family could not afford. At the time of the murder of Paul Howell, Jones had prior convictions, based upon guilty pleas, to unlawful use of a fictitious name, false declaration to a pawnbroker, concealing stolen property, and larceny from a retailer. Jones had used the name and birth certificate of another man named Lewis Wayne Richardson to apply for an Oklahoma identification card on September 30, 1998. Jones admitted to stealing four pagers from a Target store on December 9, 1998, that he had concealed a compact disc player he had stolen the same day from a Walmart store, and that he had lied about having ownership of the stolen property for two months when he tried to pawn it. The State also presented evidence at his trial of various unadjudicated acts which included attempting to elude a police officer, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, armed robbery of a jewelry store at Quail Springs Mall, two armed carjackings in July 1999 at the Hideaway Pizza, and a physical altercation with a detention officer. In 2006, Jones pleaded guilty to Robbery with Firearms and Possession of a Firearm After Felony Conviction for a carjacking he committed on July 22, 1999.
A photograph of Jones taken about a week before the murder shows him with short, close-cropped hair.
Crime Paul Scott Howell, a 45-year-old insurance executive, spent the evening of July 28, 1999, shopping for school supplies and eating ice cream with his two daughters, aged 7 and 9, and his sister, Megan Tobey. At about 9:30p.m., Howell pulled into the driveway of his parents' home in Edmond, Oklahoma, where he was living after separating from his wife several months earlier, in his 1997 GMC Suburban. As Tobey exited the passenger side of the vehicle, she heard a gunshot. Tobey turned to face her brother and saw a young black male, who wore a white T-shirt, a red bandana over his face, and a black stocking cap on his head, standing beside the vehicle's open driver's side door. The man demanded that Howell give him the keys to the vehicle. Tobey pulled the two children out of the back seat and ran with them through her parents' carport. As they ran, she heard someone yelling at her to stop, and a second gunshot. The murderer then left in Howell's Suburban. Howell's parents ran outside and found their son lying in the driveway. Howell was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead at 1:45a.m. The state medical examiner later testified at Jones' trial that Howell died of "a single contact wound," a wound where the gun was pressed against his head when it was fired.
Investigation Two days after the shooting, Oklahoma City police found Howell's Suburban parked near a convenience store on the south side of town. Officers canvassed the area to determine who left it there and spoke with Kermit Lottie, who owned an auto body shop four blocks from where the vehicle was found. Lottie told police that a man he identified as "Day Day" and another man whom he did not know had tried to sell him the Suburban the day before, but he refused to buy it. Lottie provided police with Day Day's business card, which bore his legal name, Ladell King, and his contact information.
Police went to King's apartment and found only King's girlfriend, Vickson McDonald, at home. At officers' request, she called King and told him the police were there and would like to speak to him. King went home and provided officers with information about the Paul Howell murder. King told police that he had agreed to help Jones and his friend Christopher Jordan find a buyer for a stolen vehicle. On the night of the murder, Jordan had come to King's apartment driving his own 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass, and Jones had arrived fifteen or twenty minutes later driving Howell's Suburban, and wearing a white T-shirt, a red bandana, a stocking cap, and gloves. Jones warned King not to touch the Suburban and asked him to find someone to buy it. King's neighbor saw Jones and King checking out the Suburban that night. While King was speaking with police, he received a page from Julius Jones and provided police with the phone number, which traced back to Jones' parents' house.
Police drove to Jones' parents' house at about 4:15p.m., with King accompanying them and directing them to the residence. An officer called the number supplied by King, and Jones answered. The officer told Jones that the Oklahoma City Police Department had surrounded the house and wanted to talk to him about Howell's murder. Jones agreed to come out and talk, but instead left the house through a second-floor window, evaded officers attempting to secure the perimeter of the house, and fled. Officers obtained warrants to arrest Jones and search his parents' home for evidence. Jones' father, Anthony, said that in the course of the search, officers tore doors off their hinges, broke windows, stepped in boxes full of family photos—tearing some—and dumped out boxes of cereal, methods which a police sergeant stated were routine and necessary to find crucial evidence in a murder investigation. In Jones' bedroom, detectives discovered a white T-shirt with black trim and a black stocking cap. At about 1:00a.m., officers also found a chrome-plated Raven .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol wrapped in a red bandana and hidden in the attic space above the ceiling of the closet in the room Jones shared with his brother, and hidden behind the cover of the doorbell chime, officers discovered a .25-caliber magazine for the gun they had just found capable of holding seven bullets, and loaded with five bullets. The gun was consistent with King's description of a gun King said Jones habitually carried for self-defense.
Christopher Jordan was arrested on the evening of July 30, and Jones was arrested at a friend's apartment at about 6:15a.m. on July 31. According to Jones, the officer who arrested him called him a "nigger" and dared him to run, implying the officer would shoot him if he did. The two men were charged conjointly with conspiracy to commit a felony (the theft of the Suburban) and first-degree murder. Jones was also charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Legal proceedings Trial Guilt phase Christopher O'Neal Jordan, Jones' co-defendant, pleaded guilty on October 11, 2001 and agreed to testify against Jones. He was given a life sentence of which all but 30 years were suspended for first-degree murder, and a sentence of 10 years for the conspiracy charge, to be served concurrently. Jones' trial was held February 11–15, 19–22, 25–28, and March 1–4, 2002, with Judge Jerry D. Bass presiding.
Opening statements were made on February 14. Prosecutor Sandra Elliott said that Jones and Jordan had been looking for a Suburban with the keys because they believed they could sell it for about $5,000, and "Paul Howell was murdered simply because he had a car they wanted." Public defender Malcolm Savage said the evidence would show that Christopher Jordan's story wasn't believable, and that Jordan, not Jones, shot Howell.
Howell's sister, Megan Tobey testified that day that she grabbed her nieces from the back seat as she heard a gunshot and someone repeating twice, "where are the keys?" She said a second gunshot was fired at herself and her nieces as they fled. Tobey testified that the gunman's cap came down to about above his ears, and she could see hair on the sides of his head. She also testified that she did not see braids or cornrows, which was how Christopher Jordan wore his hair. Howell's father, William Dean Howell, Sr., also testified about what he had witnessed on the night of the murder.