News about Julius Jones

Despite retaining his innocence, an Oklahoma death row prisoner found guilty of a brutal rape and murder of a student has lost his opportunity for a clemency hearing. Anthony Sanchez, 44, is set to be executed in September for the murder of Juli Busken, 21 years old, but state senator Kevin Stitt has offered the possibility of a clemency hearing. Sanchez, on the other hand, wants to go forward with his death sentence, saying that there is "no ray" that the state's Republican governor Kevin Stitt will save his life. He told the Associated Press from death row that, in the rare situation where the five-member Pardon and Parole Board recommend clemency, Stitt is unlikely to grant it. Busken, a recent University of Oklahoma dance student who had been arrested from her apartment the morning of Dec. 20, 1996, was discovered dead outside in Oklahoma City, just 12 hours after being arrested from her apartment. According to legal records, Busken was found brutally tied, assaulted, raped, and shot in the back of the head with a.22-caliber firearm. Sanchez, a former prisoner of Argentina, appealed his conviction in February, arguing that his father is to blame for Juli's rape and murder. Thomas Glen Sanchez, Sanchez's late father, admitted to the assault before he died by suicide last year, but DNA tests contradicted this belief. Julius Jones, a death row prisoner, was only granted clemency in November for the first time only a few days before Jones was scheduled to have a lethal injection.