Victim’s Family Seeks Clemency for Quintin Jones, Facing May 19 Execution in Texas

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has vot­ed to deny clemen­cy to Quintin Jones (pic­tured, right), dis­re­gard­ing the request by the fam­i­ly of Berthena Bryant, whom Jones killed in 1999, ask­ing Texas Governor Greg Abbott to com­mute his sen­tence to life in prison. The board­’s vote on May 18, 2021 comes one day before Jones is sched­uled to be executed.

Bryant was Jones’ great-aunt. The fam­i­ly’s plea for clemen­cy, which stress­es Jones’ remorse and reha­bil­i­ta­tion, has gained the sup­port of more than 150,000 peo­ple who have signed a Change​.org peti­tion urg­ing Abbott to spare Jones’ life.

In an inter­view on CBS This Morning, Mattie Long (pic­tured left), Bryant’s sis­ter, said she has for­giv­en Jones and does not think he should be exe­cut­ed. ​“I love him very much,” she said. ​“I think the gov­er­nor should spare him, because he has changed and he’s a dif­fer­ent per­son than he used to be.”

Jones agrees. He admits to the killing but says, ​“I’m noth­ing like that per­son” who mur­dered Ms. Bryant.

Jones cred­its Long with inspir­ing him to reform. ​“Another thing that helped me out was my great aunt, Aunt Mattie. It was her sis­ter. So by her lov­ing me enough to for­give me, it gave me the strength to try to do bet­ter and to want to do bet­ter,” he said in a video pro­duced by the New York Times. In a let­ter to Governor Abbott, Long wrote, ​“Because I was so close to Bert, her death hurt me a lot. Even so, God is mer­ci­ful. … Quintin can’t bring her back. I can’t bring her back. I am writ­ing this to ask you to please spare Quintin’s life.”

On February 22, 2018, Abbott com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Thomas ​“Bart” Whitaker less than an hour before he was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed. Whitaker’s father Kent — the sole sur­vivor of an attack in which his wife and only oth­er son were mur­dered — had urged Abbott to grant clemen­cy to his son. Less than six months lat­er, the state exe­cut­ed Christopher Young despite a plea from the victim’s fam­i­ly to spare his life.

At that time, Young’s lawyer, David Dow, point­ed out racial dis­par­i­ties in the com­mu­ta­tion process. Family mem­bers of the mur­der vic­tim had asked the par­dons board to com­mute the death sen­tence imposed on the per­son con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing their loved one six times this cen­tu­ry, Dow not­ed. “[O]f those six,” Dow said, ​“three are black, two are Hispanic and one is white. Only in the case of the white guy [Thomas Whitaker] did they vote to recommend commutation.”

Jones’ Story of Redemption

Jones was 20 years old and strug­gling with drug addic­tion when he killed Bryant. ​“He had an unimag­in­ably dif­fi­cult child­hood of abuse and vio­lence and addic­tion and neglect,” said writer Suleika Jaouad, who has been pen pals with Jones for almost ten years, ​“but as he said to me, his child­hood did not excuse what he did.” She calls Jones ​“the epit­o­me of a prison suc­cess sto­ry,” explain­ing that he express­es deep remorse for his crime and has built strong, pos­i­tive rela­tion­ships with pen pals around the world dur­ing his 21 years in prison. Sylvie, a Swiss moth­er of two who has cor­re­spond­ed with Jones, said he encour­aged her chil­dren to stay in school and avoid drugs, using his own poor choic­es as an exam­ple for them. After her son’s sui­cide last year, Sylvie said Jones was a source of com­fort to her.

In an opin­ion piece for the New York Times, Jaouad writes, ​“We make exam­ples of peo­ple all the time, and some­times right­ful­ly so. But the great­est exam­ple that can be made of Quintin Phillippe Jones is that human beings are capa­ble of redemp­tion and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, deserv­ing of mer­cy and grace.”

Legal Issues in Jones’ Case

Jones does not con­test his guilt. However, he has filed a peti­tion for writ of cer­tio­rari in the U.S. Supreme Court and sought a stay of exe­cu­tion seek­ing review of two issues. 

First, he argues that his exe­cu­tion should be stayed to per­mit him to inves­ti­gate and present evi­dence that he may be inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Jones’ IQ scores place him in the bor­der­line range of intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied his claim on the grounds that he had failed to make out a pri­ma facie claim that he is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. Jones alleges that his first state appeals lawyer failed to devel­op the issue dur­ing a time in which the Texas courts were apply­ing an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly harsh def­i­n­i­tion of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and that he should have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to have the issue decid­ed based upon the cur­rent clin­i­cal diag­nos­tic cri­te­ria for intellectual disability. 

Second, Jones argues that Texas obtained his death sen­tence by pre­sent­ing sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly false tes­ti­mo­ny con­cern­ing his alleged future dan­ger­ous­ness in prison if he had been sen­tenced to life. State pros­e­cu­tors’ expert wit­ness admin­is­tered a con­tro­ver­sial test called the Hare Psychopathy Checklist that has been crit­i­cized for its unre­li­a­bil­i­ty in pre­dict­ing future con­duct in an insti­tu­tion­al set­ting. The expert then labeled Jones as a ​“psy­chopath,” which he defined as a per­son who ​“doesn’t have a con­scious or has lit­tle con­science.” Jones has asked the Court to review whether the prosecution’s use of expert tes­ti­mo­ny that since has been dis­cred­it­ed vio­lates his due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.

If Jones is exe­cut­ed, his will be the first exe­cu­tion by a U.S. state in more than 10 months. Though the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment exe­cut­ed 13 peo­ple in 2020 and 2021, the last state exe­cu­tion was car­ried out in Texas on July 8, 2020. It is the longest peri­od with­out a state exe­cu­tion in more than 40 years. Five of the six death war­rants cur­rent­ly pend­ing in the U.S. are in Texas.