Julius Jones (prisoner)

On the night of the murder, Jordan had come to King's apartment driving his own 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass, and Jones had arrived fifteen or twenty minutes later driving Howell's Suburban, and wearing a white T-shirt, a red bandana, a stocking cap, and gloves.

Jones warned King not to touch the Suburban and asked him to find someone to buy it.

Julius Darius Jones (born July 25, 1980) is an American prisoner and former death row inmate from Oklahoma who was convicted of the July 1999 murder of Paul Howell.

His case has received international attention due to claims of innocence and controversy surrounding his trial and conviction.

Jones was convicted of the crime on the basis of what the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals later characterized as an "overwhelming" body of evidence consisting of "a co-defendant who directly implicated Jones, eyewitness identification, incriminating statements made by Jones after the crime, flight from police, damning physical evidence hidden in Jones's parents' home, and an interlocking web of other physical and testimonial evidence consistent with the State's theory."

Jones and his defense team maintain that he was at home with his family at the time of the murder and that his co-defendant Christopher Jordan is the true perpetrator of the crime, contending that eyewitness descriptions of the killer better describe Jordan than Jones, and noting that three jailhouse informants have said that they have heard Jordan confess to the shooting.

Jones was scheduled to be executed on November 18, 2021.

However, four hours before his scheduled execution, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt commuted his sentence to life imprisonment without parole.

Jones was born to Madeline Davis-Jones on July 25, 1980, in Oklahoma.

He was the second of three siblings and has one younger sister, Antoinette, and one older brother, Antonio.

At about 9:30 PM, Howell pulled into the driveway of his parents' home in Edmond, Oklahoma, where he was living after separating from his wife several months earlier, in his 1997 GMC Suburban.

As Tobey exited the passenger side of the vehicle, she heard a gunshot.

Tobey turned to face her brother and saw a young black male, who wore a white T-shirt, a red bandana over his face, and a black stocking cap on his head, standing beside the vehicle's open driver's side door.

The man demanded that Howell give him the keys to the Suburban.

Tobey pulled the two children out of the back seat and ran with them through her parents' carport.

As they ran, she heard someone yelling at her to stop, and a second gunshot.

The murderer then left in Howell's Suburban.

Howell's parents ran outside and found their son lying in the driveway.

Howell was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead at 1:45 AM.

The state medical examiner later testified at Jones' trial that Howell died of "a single contact wound," a wound where the gun was pressed against his head when it was fired.

Two days after the shooting, Oklahoma City police found Howell's Suburban parked near a convenience store on the south side of town.

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.

Lottie told police that a man he identified as "Day Day" and another man whom he did not know had tried to sell him the Suburban the day before, but he refused to buy it.

Lottie provided police with Day Day's business card, which bore his legal name, Ladell King, and his contact information.

Police went to King's apartment and found only King's girlfriend, Vickson McDonald, at home.

At officers' request, she called King and told him the police were there and would like to speak to him.

King went home and provided officers with information about the Paul Howell murder.

King told police that he had agreed to help Jones and his friend Christopher Jordan find a buyer for a stolen vehicle.

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.

Jones had used the name and birth certificate of another man named Lewis Wayne Richardson to apply for an Oklahoma identification card on September 30, 1998.

Jones admitted to stealing four pagers from a Target store on December 9, 1998, that he had concealed a compact disc player he had stolen the same day from a Walmart store, and that he had lied about having ownership of the stolen property for two months when he tried to pawn it.

Blake and Taylor Griffin's father coached Jones and his friend, Christopher Jordan, who later became his co-defendant in the 1999 crime.

Jones has said that he knew Jordan was not a good influence, but wanted to help him.

Jones won a partial academic scholarship to the University of Oklahoma but withdrew during his second semester.

Jones' family was not in poverty, but Jones committed several acts of larceny and petty theft, which he says he committed in order to obtain things his family could not afford.

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.

The State also presented evidence at his trial of various unadjudicated acts which included attempting to elude a police officer, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, armed robbery of a jewelry store at Quail Springs Mall, two armed carjackings in July 1999 at the Hideaway Pizza, and a physical altercation with a detention officer.

In 2006, Jones pleaded guilty to Robbery with Firearms and Possession of a Firearm After Felony Conviction for a carjacking he committed on July 22, 1999.

A photograph of Jones taken about a week before the murder shows him with short, close-cropped hair.

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.