The 41-year-old convicted of a 1999 murder has maintained his innocence throughout his nearly 20 years on death row

Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt (R) commuted the death sentence of Julius Jones on Thursday, intervening just hours before his scheduled execution. Jones, 41, has spent nearly 20 years on death row for the 1999 slaying of a suburban Oklahoma City businessman. Jones, who has maintained his innocence since his arrest at age 19, was recommended for a commutation and later clemency by the state’s Pardon and Parole Board.

“After prayerful consideration and reviewing materials presented by all sides of this case, I have determined to commute Julius Jones’s sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” Stitt said in a statement.

Jones’s claims that a former friend committed the murder and implicated him were featured in the 2018 ABC documentary “The Last Defense,” broadening awareness of the case and drawing in high-profile supporters from around the country. The battle over Jones’s execution comes amid scrutiny of Oklahoma death-penalty protocol. The state resumed executions in October after a six-year hiatus following a string of botched lethal injections in 2014 and 2015.

The news was bittersweet for Jones’s allies, who noted Stitt’s decision to modify the Pardon and Parole Board’s original recommendation to commute Jones’s sentence to life with the possibility of parole means Jones will never get out of prison.

“I was expecting this, and it’s still hard to digest,” Oklahoma State Sen. George Young (D), who has been among Jones’s longtime supporters, told The Washington Post minutes after the governor’s decision. “He waits to the last minute and not kill him, but assign him a fate that is in some ways worse than death and [the governor] claims the high ground.”

Jones has served nearly 20 years on death row after he was convicted for the 1999 murder of Paul Scott Howell in nearby Edmond, Okla. during a carjacking. Jones’s long-standing assertion of innocence has in recent years attracted worldwide attention, drawing in notable supporters such as Kim Kardashian West and members of the National Basketball Association who had ties to Jones from his time as a youth basketball star.

Amanda Bass, one of Jones’s federal public defenders, echoed Young’s relief mixed with the disappointment that Stitt’s decision closes off the possibility of Jones being freed.

“While we had hoped the Governor would adopt the Board’s recommendation in full by commuting Julius’s sentence to life with the possibility of parole in light of the overwhelming evidence of Julius’s innocence, we are grateful that the Governor has prevented an irreparable mistake,” Bass said in a statement.

In Oklahoma, the governor can accept, reject or modify recommendations by the state’s Pardon and Parole Board to grant a prisoner a reprieve from death row. The board in September recommended that Jones’s sentence be commuted to life with the possibility of parole, bolstering his supporters’s hopes Jones could be released with time served. Stitt deferred action, saying he would wait until Jones’s clemency hearing, which fell closer to his execution date. The board on Nov. 1 again voted in Jones’s favor to recommend clemency, which takes the death penalty off the table permanently.

“Governor Stitt, please send my baby boy home,” Jones’s mother, Madeline Davis-Jones, said in a video message days before the execution date. “He is innocent, and please send him home. In Jesus’s name, I ask you.”

Attorneys for Jones filed an emergency injunction on Thursday in a last-ditch effort to stay the execution in the event the governor does not grant clemency. In the filing, his attorneys state that the recent execution of John Grant shows the state’s lethal injection protocol continues to “pose a serious substantial risk of severe suffering and pain to prisoners.” A media witness said Grant convulsed about two dozen times after the first drug was administered. Grant’s execution in late October was the first to take place in Oklahoma since several botched lethal injections derailed the state’s death penalty system six years ago.

Jones had exhausted his legal appeals, making Stitt’s decision the last hope for sparing his life.

Pressure on Stitt to grant the clemency request intensified in recent days as the execution date neared. Jones’s family unsuccessfully petitioned to meet with Stitt on Tuesday, while dozens of students at the University of Oklahoma marched in protest a week earlier and called for the governor to grant clemency.

Several Republican lawmakers from Oklahoma, including two representing the town where Howell was murdered, have urged Stitt to spare Jones.

State Rep. Garry Mize (R) said in a statement that Oklahoma should not execute a person whose guilt is in doubt, and he echoed Jones’s attorneys, who said his co-defendant, Christopher Jordan, confessed to the murder. Jordan was convicted of lesser charges and has since been released.

State Rep. John Talley (R) agreed, saying in a statement that the Pardon and Parole Board had spent hours looking at the case and determined that the justice system may have erred in convicting Jones.

“If we believe, as conservatives, in law and order and the criminal justice system, then we have to make sure the system is getting it right,” Talley said.

Calls for Stitt to grant clemency came from outside the United States, as well, with the European Union and German ambassadors to Washington urging the governor to accept the Pardon and Parole Board’s recommendation.

In a letter delivered yesterday, @EUAmbUS urgently requested that @GovStitt of Oklahoma grants clemency to #JuliusJones, who is scheduled to be executed on November 18. The EU firmly opposes capital punishment at all times & in all circumstances. More: https://t.co/JAqtFeuHE4 pic.twitter.com/avtLldpXDd

— EU in the U.S. (@EUintheUS) November 16, 2021

“The concerns expressed by Board members, including Mr. Jones’ lack of understanding of the consequences of his actions at age nineteen, fundamental questions about evidence, and the disparity between his and Mr. Christopher Jordan’s sentences, underscore the importance of commuting Mr. Jones’ sentence,” Stavros Lambrinidis, the E.U. European Union’s ambassador to the United States, wrote in an open letter to Stitt.

Lambrinidis and others who called for clemency acknowledged the pain of the Howell family. Howell’s survivors, including his sister Megan Tobey, have spoken out at hearings about the pain caused by Howell’s murder and their belief in Jones’s guilt.

Howell, 45, had just returned home from a shopping trip with his two daughters and Tobey when he was shot during a carjacking in his parents’ driveway the night of July 28, 1999.

Connie Ellison, Howell’s girlfriend at the time, spoke to The Washington Post about how her doubts over Jones’s guilt have grown over the years, prompting her to speak in support of him at his recent hearings before the Pardon and Parole Board.

Since taking office in January 2019, Stitt has not broken with the board’s recommendations.

Jones is now the be the sixth person since 1973 on Oklahoma’s death row to be granted clemency from Oklahoma’s death row.