Television Documentary Chronicles Innocence Claims of Two Death-Row Prisoners

A new doc­u­men­tary air­ing on ABC tells the sto­ries of Darlie Lynn Routier and Julius Jones, two death-row pris­on­ers who have long argued they were wrongfully convicted. 

The Last Defense, pro­duced by Oscar- and Emmy-win­ning actress Viola Davis and her hus­band Julius Tennon, focus­es its first four episodes on Routier, a Texas woman con­vict­ed of killing her young son, then high­lights Jones, a Black man who was a 19-year-old col­lege stu­dent when he was arrest­ed for the mur­der of a White businessman. 

Routier says an intrud­er broke into her home, killed her 5- and 6‑year-old sons, and stabbed her while her hus­band and youngest son slept upstairs. Police con­clud­ed that Routier had staged the break-in and quick­ly named her as the sus­pect in her sons’ mur­ders. Her tri­al in the death of the younger child began only sev­en months after the mur­ders and last­ed only two days. Her attor­neys say she did not receive ade­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion at tri­al, and that her tri­al attor­ney failed to counter foren­sic evi­dence against her because he had a con­flict of inter­est, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ed Routier’s hus­band in an unrelated case. 

Though a court has ordered DNA test­ing that could ver­i­fy Routier’s bur­glary sto­ry, bureau­crat­ic delays have kept her wait­ing on death row. A June 19, 2017 sta­tus report on the test­ing said, ​“In May 2017, coun­sel in the Dallas County District Attorney (office) learned the mate­ri­als that were sup­posed to have been trans­port­ed to the Department of Public Safety for DNA test­ing, as the state tri­al court’s test­ing order had required, had nev­er been trans­port­ed to DPS.” 

Jones, who is on death row in Oklahoma, had been a high school ath­lete and hon­or stu­dent who did not fit the descrip­tion of the shoot­er. Like Routier, he is seek­ing DNA test­ing that he believes will prove his inno­cence. Jones’s case rais­es claims of inef­fec­tive coun­sel, and the series explores the role of race in his tri­al, as a young Black man accused of killing a White man in a suburban neighborhood. 

Jones has an appeal pend­ing in the U.S. Supreme Court ask­ing the Court to review the race dis­crim­i­na­tion in his case. Data from a 2017 study of race and the death penal­ty show that, in Oklahoma, defen­dants con­vict­ed of killing White vic­tims are more than twice as like­ly to be sen­tenced to death as those con­vict­ed of killing vic­tims of col­or, and that among these White-vic­tim cas­es, defen­dants of col­or were then near­ly twice as like­ly as White defen­dants to be sen­tenced to death. The Last Defense airs Tuesdays on ABC.