Julius Jones

“No matter what happens, I want to be a light in this world,” avows Julius Jones.

Julius has not been able to hug his mother in 20 years. He spends 23 to 24 hours a day locked in a cell underground in solitary confinement. Even for people who have committed the worst crimes, this basic denial of human connection would be sadistic and appalling. But Julius Jones is innocent.

In 2002, Julius was suddenly uprooted from his promising future as a 19-year-old student at the University of Oklahoma, where he had an academic scholarship and planned to try out for the basketball team. In a trial riddled with racial discrimination, a nearly all-white jury—including a juror overheard saying, “they should just take the n***** out and shoot him behind the jail”— convicted Julius of the murder of a white businessman, and sentenced him to death.

Despite the sheer horror of what Julius has had to endure day after day for the past 20 years, he strives to bring joy to his family members, friends, and supporters – who now include celebrities Kim Kardashian, Russel Westbrook, Blake Griffin, Jason Flom, Dak Prescott, Trae Young and Buddy Hield, among others. And he remains a fierce advocate not only for his own exoneration, but for other cases as well, reminding us that prisoners are “human beings, not statistics.”