Kim Kardashian Visits Oklahoma Death Row in Effort to Help Inmate Julius Jones

11/24/2020 12:48 pm EST

Kim Kardashian is looking into a new case as she continues her work in criminal justice reform while studying for the California Bar Exam. The Keeping Up With the Kardashians star met with death row inmate Julius Jones in Oklahoma City Monday, reports TMZ, meeting with both Jones and his attorney, Dale Baich, to discuss how she could help their push for clemency before also meeting with his family.

Jones, a Black man, was arrested at 19 in 1999 for the shooting death of a 45-year-old white man named Paul Howell, convicted of first-degree murder in 2002 and sentenced to death. Critics of Jones' case have said his arrest was racially charged, with little physical evidence to tie him to the crime and poor legal defense coming together for what many think was a wrongful conviction.

Viola Davis produced the docuseries The Last Defense about Jones' case in 2018, which is reportedly where Kardashian first became aware of the case. She had previously shown interest, promoting a Change.org petition asking for the state of Oklahoma to free Jones. In 2019, Jones' legal team filed a petition for clemency, and they are now waiting on The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board to recommend his sentence be commuted and reduced, which would ultimately fall to Gov. Kevin Stitt to approve or dismiss.

This isn't the first questionable case Kardashian has taken on, meeting with President Donald Trump in 2018 to recommend Alice Johnson, a non-violent drug offender, be granted clemency after 21 years. The reality star had success, and Johnson was granted the pardon in June 2018, being released at age 63.

Kardashian is now studying to become a lawyer in the state of California, and plans to take the Bar in 2022 after finishing her four-year apprenticeship with attorneys Jessica Jackson, the national director of criminal justice advocacy group #Cut50 and Erin Haney, the National Policy Director for #Cut50, a criminal justice reform office out of San Francisco, California.

"My goal in 10 years would be to give up being Kim K. and focus on this, and be an attorney and fight for so many deserving people," Kardashian said in a May 2019 episode of KUWTK, adding of balancing her life as a business owner, mother to four and reality star, "My dad always taught me that hard work is really important and to really commit to things."

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