On September 13, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended that Governor Kevin Stitt take Julius Jones off death row and commute his sentence to life in prison with the possibility of  parole.  The Jones case has divided public opinion so markedly that the governor's decision will be criticized no matter what it is.

A news story about the parole board’s action drew comments which starkly illustrated the split.  One reader wrote:

Gov. Stitt needs to do the right thing and let this innocent man out of jail. It is a complete tragedy what has happened here. I don't know how ANYONE can say this man is quilty after you take in ALL of the evidence!. PLEASE GOVERNOR STITT DO THE RIGHT THING!!!!

However, another reader thought exactly the opposite:

Gov Stitt will see to it that this monster gets his just desert! Julius is 100% guilty and deserves the death penalty! NOW!!

In 1999, a carjacker murdered Paul Howell.  Jones denied committing the crime, but in 2002, a jury found him guilty.  He has been on death row 19 years and could be executed later this year if the governor rejects the parole board’s recommendation.

The Innocence Project has championed Jones and so has celebrity Kim Kardashian.  Portions of the ABC documentary series “The Last Defense” focused on his case.

On the other side, the Oklahoma attorney general  emphatically argues that Jones committed the murder.  So does Oklahoma City district attorney David Prater, who told the parole board, “If the Board objectively considers the truth, they will quickly vote to deny the killer's commutation request.”

Some of the victim’s relatives also attended the parole board meeting and spoke against a reduction in Jones’ sentence. “I was there when my brother Paul Howell was murdered,” Megan Tobey said, I know beyond a doubt that Julius Jones murdered my brother.”

But some parole board members did have doubts.  Adam Luck said he believed that before executing someone, there should be no doubt about the person’s guilty: “I have doubts about this case”  which he could not ignore, “especially when the stakes are life and death.”However, some believed it improper for the parole board to consider the issue of innocence or guilt, a matter already decided by a jury, whose verdict was affirmed on appeal.  The murder victim’s brother, Brian Howell, complained that the board had not followed its own rules but instead had relitigated facts already decided by the jury.

“Our family continues to be victimized by Julius Jones and his lies," Howell said.  "Almost 20 years ago, we trusted the jury in this case and over the last 18 years, we have trusted the appellate process.”

In Oklahoma, the governor is free to follow or reject the recommendation of the parole board.  It stands to reason that if the governor properly can take into account doubts about whether Jones committed the crime, then the parole board likewise may take into account whether Jones is actually innocent.

It seems appropriate to allow a governor to consider the possibility of actual innocence because the power to grant clemency is both a safeguard to prevent injustice - part of the scheme of checks and balances - and also an act of mercy.  We don't know yet whether Governor Kevin Stitt will consider mercy appropriate in this case.

However, we do know that in 2019, Governor Stitt believed that there were too many people in Oklahoma prisons.  So the governor made two appointments which you might not expect from a Republican.  He put two “bleeding hearts”  - Kelly Doyle and Adam Luck - on the parole board.

 

A 2019 law created an expedited process for commutations. Doyle and Luck went to work. In a November 2019 newspaper article, Doyle wrote:

This month, Oklahoma saw the largest single-day commutation in our nation’s history. The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended, and Gov. Kevin Stitt approved, the commutation of more than 500 people serving time for drug possession and low-level property crimes.

District attorneys went ballistic.  The Oklahoma District Attorneys Association, a private organization, filed a broad open records request to obtain Luck’s emails.  Various DAs also have accused Luck and Doyle of bias and requested they disqualify themselves.

Additionally, before the parole board's hearing concerning Julius Jones, Oklahoma City district attorney David Prater went so far as to  file a lawsuit seeking to have Doyle and Luck disqualified.  The Supreme Court ruled against Prater.

Luck's lawyer called Prater's lawsuit a veiled attempt to attack the executive power of the governor.  The lawyer, Evan Gatewood, said "Mr. Prater thinks his idea of what the parole board should look like should override what the governor of this state thinks the parole board should look like."

Why do the district attorneys, and  particularly DA Prater, object so strenuously to Doyle and Luck?  Shouldn't the district attorneys be upset with the elected officials who decided to lower the number of people in prison, rather than those carrying out the new policy?

Both Doyle and Luck have "day jobs" with nonprofit organizations.  Doyle helps manage a charity which assists convicts in finding jobs when they leave prison.  Luck heads a nonprofit which provides shelter to the homeless.  (Amazingly, some of the district attorneys claim that Luck's job creates a conflict of interest.  They argue that he would be motivated to let more people out of prison so that there would be more homeless individuals for his organization to serve!) 

 Perhaps Prater's earlier career explains some of the hostility.  Before going to law school he was a police officer.

In fact, Prater may have been a bit of a Supercop.  In addition to serving on the police department’s tactical unit, he belonged to the department's underwater rescue team and its pistol team, and was a firearms instructor.  Prater received more than 20 commendations.  Then he went to law school at the University of Oklahoma.

By comparison, Luck has a masters degree in public policy from Harvard.  He speaks Korean and served  in the Air Force as a “cryptologic linguist.”   He describes his background in this TEDx talk.

Kelly Doyle has a masters degree from the University of Chicago.  When announcing her appointment, the governor's office noted that Doyle had worked for an international aid agency, “completing tours in Darfur, South Sudan, and the hurricane-affected areas of Louisiana and Mississippi” before beginning her work helping released convicts find employment.

With these differences in background, it would be unlikely for Doyle and Luck to agree with Prater about everything.  And some disagreements are not only inevitable but productive.

But it seems quite unusual, even extreme, that a district attorney would go to court to disqualify members of the parole board from considering a particular case.   Moreover, DA Prater has extensive legal experience, so it's reasonable to assume he realized he had a thin case.  What motivated him to go ahead anyway, despite the risk?  Politics?

Execution chamber photo in update is from the California Department of Corrections, via Wikimedia Commons.

Almost a year before George Floyd's murder, 3 Aurora, Colorado, cops and 2 paramedics killed 23–year–old Elijah McClain.  Local officials took no actions against the perpetrators.

However, protests by the public prompted action at the state level.  In 2020, the Colorado legislature enacted a law banning the use of choke holds, restricting law enforcement's use of the sedative Ketamine, and not allowing police to assert qualified immunity when sued for misconduct.

The Colorado attorney general began an investigation.  Now, two years after McClain's death, a grand jury has indicted Aurora police officers Randy Roedema, Nathan Woodyard and Jason Rosenblatt and paramedics Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper.  Each faces charges of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and assault.
 
In the past two decades, the city of Aurora has been sued at least 16 times by plaintiffs alleging police misconduct directed towards minorities.  The city has paid more than 4.5 million dollars to settle a number of these lawsuits.  The death of Elijah McClain sheds some light on what's wrong with the Aurora police department.

The following brief summary of what happened to McClain can only hint at the senselessness and horror of the young man's death.  On the evening of August 24, 2019, McClain was walking home from a grocery store, where he had bought iced tea.  He was wearing a jacket and ski mask even though it was summer.  His family later explained that he had anemia, which caused him to feel cold.

McClain appeared suspicious to someone, who called the police.  In fact, a bodycam recorded one officer telling McClain, "I have a right to stop you because you're being suspicious."

Two of the now-indicted officers had served in the Marine Corps.  Roedema had spent 8 years and Woodyard 5 years on active duty.  In contrast, McClain was a massage therapist who weighed 143 pounds, was a vegetarian, played the violin and liked cats.  Another difference: McClain was Black.

The grand jury's indictment stated that Officer Woodyard arrived first and told McClain to stop.  The indictment continues:

WOODYARD did not see Mr. McClain with any weapons, but he noted a grocery bag and that, in his opinion, Mr. McClain was 'suspicious.'  Immediately after WOODYARD contacted Mr. McClain, ROSENBLATT joined WOODYARD and the stop quickly turned physical.  ROEDEMA later told investigators that in Aurora, as opposed to other police departments, they tended to 'take control of an individual, whether that be, you know, a[n] escort position, a twist lock, whatever it may be, we tend to control it before it needs to be controlled.'

Roedma's words shed light on why so many people have filed lawsuits against the city for police misconduct.  Aurora police, unlike those in other departments, "tend to control it before it needs to be controlled."  Translation: These cops get physical when there is no need.

So, 3 bullies, two of them ex-Marines, don't like the looks of this little guy and decide to do something about it.  But these bullies also had guns and badges.  The indictment continues:

The officers grabbed Mr. McClain's arms then forcibly moved Mr. McClain over to a grassy area near where the officers first contacted Mr. McClain and pushed him up against the exterior wall of a nearby apartment building.  ROEDEMA grabbed the grocery bag out of Mr. McClain's hands and threw it to the ground.  He didn't examine the bag's contents.  The bag contained cans of iced tea.

It appears that McClain reacted to this abuse by fighting back.  That proved to be a fatal mistake.

The cops applied "carotid controls," often called "choke holds," twice.  The first didn't work but the second rendered McClain temporarily unconscious.

While officers held McClain down, the paramedics injected him with the anesthetic Ketamine, but they gave him too much.  McClain's heart stopped in the ambulance.  The paramedics managed to restore a pulse but he never regained consciousness.

A Toxic Culture

Preventing a repetition of this tragedy will require a change in police culture.  How some officers reacted to McClain's death, and the resulting public outcry, reveals a very unhealthy attitude.

A couple of months after McClain's death, 3 cops went to a memorial near the location where he had been stopped.  These officers did not take part in the events lading to his death and 2 of them weren't even at the scene.  But as a joke, they smiled for a picture while one of them pretended to perform the "carotid hold."  Then, they sent the picture to a group chat where other cops could see it.

In the past, this action likely would not have gotten the officers in trouble.  For almost 2 decades, people had been suing the police department and the city had been paying money to settle the cases, but little else had changed.  However, things did start to change when Vanessa Wilson became police chief.

The new chief did not learn about the photo immediately, but when she did, she discharged two of the officers in the picture.  She would have fired the third but he resigned.

One of the officers now facing manslaughter charges had seen the picture and had replied "haha."  The chief fired him, too.  The chief also announced that if any officer considered the photo to be acceptable, "I will gladly accept your resignation today."

The fact that police officers would mock the death of a young man - and do so at a memorial to him near where he was fatally harmed - indicates more than a lapse of manners.  It is a symptom that they have become so tribal, so wrapped up in themselves, they have forgotten duty.  Choking a little guy is not the way to serve and protect.

A statement by the police officers union also reflects such an insular culture.  When outrage over McClain's death resulted in public protests, the police officers union responded that the cops had done no wrong.

That comment might well be expected from a union.  It's job, after all, is to represent and defend its members.  But the union went beyond denying that the officers were not culpable.  It denigrated the protesters, claiming that they were harming the police department.

That response reflects a seriously misplaced loyalty, a fealty to tribe stronger than duty to the public.  Have these cops forgotten that the job of the police is to protect life, not take it?

The pull of tribalism has replaced honor.  But can this culture of aggressive entitlement be changed?  Will the indictments and the discharges be enough?

Clearly, it won't change on its own.  In July of this year - well before the announcement of the indictments in the McClain case - another Aurora cop, John Haubert, made a violent arrest.  He now faces felony charges and is on leave without pay.

The new Colorado law requires an officer to intervene when another cop acts unlawfully.  Officer Francine Martinez was with Haubert but did not try to stop him.  She has been charged with a misdemeanor.

How many indictments will it take?  That remains to be seen, but one thing is clear.  Colorado state officials and Aurora Police Chief Wilson are setting a good example which other states and police departments should follow.