[6] 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.
[9][6] 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.
[15] 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.
[11] 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.
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.
[27] Ladell King testified on February 15 that within 30 minutes after the murder, he saw Jones back the stolen Suburban into a parking space at his apartment complex in northwest Oklahoma City.
[24][11] Anand Lapsi testified that after dinner at the Hideaway Pizza on the night of July 22, 1999, he had gone to his new Mercedes-Benz in the parking lot, where a man wearing a blue bandana over the lower half of his face held a gun to his head and said, "give me the keys.
[13] Mark Merchant, the owner of Royal Jewelers at Quail Springs Mall, testified that on July 9, 1999, a black man wearing a red bandana and a stocking cap had put a gun to his head and robbed him of 30 to 40 gold chains valued at $15,000.
[12] Merchant could not identify the masked robber, but Christopher Jordan testified that Jones had taken the Cutlass on the day of the robbery and come back with gold chains, stating that he had robbed a jewelry store at Quail Springs Mall.
David McKenzie opined that "in a death-penalty case of a black man accused of killing a rich white guy, I don't think there is any possible way you could have gotten a fair trial in Oklahoma County.
[11] Jones alleged that the evidence obtained from his parents' home should have been suppressed, arguing that the information in the affidavit for the search warrant was insufficient to establish probable cause.
The OCCA held the alleged inaccuracy to be irrelevant, because even if Jones' parents claim had been included in the affidavit, a substantial basis for the warrant would still have existed and it would likely have been issued.
[11] Jones also alleged a Brady violation for the failure to disclose a letter from an Edmond Police detective to a federal prosecutor which read, "If Kermit [Lottie] had not cooperated with my investigation I believe the homicide would be unsolved to this day.
[11] FBI examiner Kathleen Lundy testified at trial that all the bullets recovered as physical evidence in the case were "analytically indistinguishable and chemically the same" and would have come from the same source of lead at Remington.
[18][6][23][15] At an evidentiary hearing, Jones' family testified that he had been home with them from approximately 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. to at least 10:30 p.m. on the night of the murder, and that another witness, Brenda Cudjoe, had also been present with her son until 9:00 or 9:30 p.m. and could corroborate this alibi.
The OCCA found that counsel did cross-examine Jordan at length, highlighting inconsistencies in his story and eliciting admissions that details he had previously given to police and his own attorney were false, and that he had lied about the case to help himself out.
[11] Jones argued that his conviction for larceny from a retailer was void because it should have been adjudicated through the juvenile system given his age at the time, and his counsel's failure to object was ineffective assistance.
The OCCA granted rehearing but denied relief on March 14, 2006, concluding with respect to these arguments that the different standard of review would not have resulted in a different conclusion about the existence of the aggravating circumstances; that Jones had waived his claim on the use of the non-violent convictions by failing to develop this argument in his initial petition, and even if he had, the use of these convictions would not have prejudiced him given the other evidence presented of violent crimes he had committed; and that Jones' reliance on Chambers was inapposite, as his accusation that his counsel had "wholly failed" to present defense evidence was "simply wrong," and he and his counsel had received and exercised a "fair opportunity to defend against the State's accusations.
Jones submitted affidavits from Littlejohn and from Christopher Berry, an inmate who at the time of the trial was being held in the Oklahoma County Jail on a charge of Child Abuse Murder, whom McKenzie also represented.
[29] In his second ground for relief, Jones also accused his trial counsel of ineffective assistance for having failed to make necessary requests and objections which would have shown that the search warrant for his family's home contained materially false information.
[29] In his third ground for relief, Jones alleged prosecutorial misconduct, saying that during closing arguments the prosecutor improperly gave her personal opinion of his guilt, vouched for the credibility of witnesses, misstated testimony, engaged in speculation, and started a demonstration as to how the shooting occurred by pointing her finger at a juror's head, and that these and "other instances" (which he did not identify) of prosecutorial misconduct deprived him of his right to due process of law under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.
[29] In his fourth ground for relief, Jones claimed he had been deprived of a fair trial because of the dismissal of the prospective juror who had said he would not vote for the death penalty under any circumstances, which the district court found had been reasonably adjudicated by OCCA, and because his counsel had been denied an opportunity to question the juror about his responses, a claim the district court found that Jones had not supported with clearly established federal law.
[29] In his fifth ground for relief, Jones argued that his Constitutional rights to be present at all critical stages of his trial were violated in several instances without an express personal waiver and against his wishes.
[37] The 10th Circuit interpreted the OCCA as having rejected this claim of ineffective assistance because the failure to discover what Berry had purportedly overheard did not prejudice Jones, regardless of whether it represented deficient performance on McKenzie's part.
[40] On November 10, 2015, the new panel again denied Jones relief, finding that he had failed to demonstrate that the OCCA's decision was contrary to clearly established federal law or based on an unreasonable determination of the facts.
[41] In February 2020, more than two dozen inmates, including Jones, filed a motion to reopen the 2014 lawsuit, Glossip v. Chandler after the state announced plans to resume executions after a nearly six-year moratorium, claiming the new lethal injection protocol was incomplete.
Jones' legal team responded, saying that "much of what is in this letter is uncharged accusations...He ignores that fact that three people came forward and said that Christopher Jordan confessed to them that he committed the murder.
[51] On November 11, 2021, five Republican lawmakers, John Talley, Logan Phillips, Kevin McDugle, Garry Mize, and Preston Stinson released a joint statement asking Governor Stitt to accept the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board's clemency recommendation.
[56] It is rare for death row inmates to be granted clemency by an Oklahoma governor, with only four having occurred prior to Jones; three by Brad Henry and one by Frank Keating.
Jones's mother, Madeline Davis-Jones, praised God and Governor Stitt and issued a statement saying, "I still believe that every day Julius spends behind bars is an injustice, and I will never stop speaking out for him or fighting to free him.