Kim Kardashian continued her fight for criminal justice reform by meeting with death row inmate Julius Jones and promising him legal help this week.
Kardashian, 40, went to Oklahoma City to meet Jones in person on Monday, a source confirmed to Page Six on Tuesday.
Jones was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 2002 for the 1999 slaying of 45-year-old Paul Howell, a white man who was fatally shot in the driveway of his parents’ home in Edmond, Oklahoma.
“She is assisting his legal team – since she’s studying to become a lawyer through her apprenticeship in [California] – and then met with his family,” the source told us.
Sources familiar with the meeting told TMZ that Kardashian met with Jones and his attorney, Dale Baich, and promised to help however she could in assisting his legal team. After the meeting, she met with some of his family members at a local church.
Jones’ mom reportedly got emotional during the meeting as she recounted the night of Howell’s murder, saying that Julius was with her at home the whole time.
Kardashian previously urged clemency for Jones in October 2019 after he filed a clemency petition with the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, asking that his death sentence be commuted to time served.
He filed an appeal with the US Supreme Court arguing that a juror was racist toward him during his trials. The claim came to light when a juror told Jones’ lawyers in 2017 that another juror used a racist term to describe Jones and said authorities should “shoot [Jones] behind the jail.” The high court rejected that appeal in April 2019.
In January that same year, the US Supreme Court handed Jones another rejection after he argued that people of color are more likely to be sentenced to death in Oklahoma when the victim is white like Howell was. in 2018, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals also rejected Jones’ appeal that argued the same thing.
Now Kardashian, who successfully lobbied President Trump to grant clemency to Alice Marie Johnson, a grandmother who was serving a life sentence without parole for drug offenses, is stepping in to support Jones’ fight for justice.
His execution date is not yet scheduled.