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The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended 3-to-1 on Monday that Julius Jones’s upcoming execution be stopped.
The high-profile inmate, set to be killed on 18 November, should instead get a life sentence with the possibility of parole for his conviction in the 1999 murder of Oklahoma City businessman Paul Howell, the board concluded.
Jones has maintained for years he did not murder Mr Howell, while the Howell family insists that police and a succession of trials and appeals courts correctly determined that Jones was the killer.
“Ordinarily during a parole hearing, we are charged with the responsibility of giving the inmates some choices about their future,” board member Larry Morris said, as the panel announced its recommendation, which will now go to the Oklahoma governor for a final decision.
“In this particular case, it’s been stepped up a notch,” he added, saying their vote decides “whether or not this young man even has a future.”
Morris pointed at how Jones’s co-defendant in the murder case, Chris Jordan, only served 15 years, what the board member called an “inherently wrong” facet of a prosecution activists say was tarred all over with racism and misconduct.
