Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt commuted the death sentence of Julius Jones on Thursday to life in prison without parole, hours before his scheduled execution.
The ruling came after attorneys for Jones filed an emergency, eleventh-hour request that the state hold off until Stitt had weighed in.
Jones, convicted in the 1999 shooting of businessman Paul Howell during a carjacking, has steadfastly maintained his innocence. The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted in September to commute his death sentence and then voted to recommend clemency on Nov. 1.
That decision was ultimately up to Stitt, who has met with Jones’ family and lawyers but has kept quiet about his decision, according to The Associated Press.
Jones and his supporters say a high school friend who has already served 15 years and is now out of prison pulled the trigger. Jones, 41, has been on death row for two decades.
The request said Oklahoma’s lethal injection procedures post a “serious and substantial risk of severe suffering and pain to prisoners” and cited last month’s execution in which John Marion Grant, 60, convulsed and vomited as he was being put to death.
The state only recently resumed executions, after a series of botched lethal injections put the practice on hiatus for six years.
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