Quintin Jones is one of many on Texas’ death row who grew up in brutal conditions and committed awful crimes while still young. He’s one of a smaller group who have changed their lives, who admit their guilt, and feel remorse. And he’s one of a very small group who have prominent supporters working to get their sentences commuted.
One of those in Jones’ life is Suleika Jaouad, a 32-year-old writer who began corresponding with Jones 10 years ago after being diagnosed with leukemia and given a 30% chance to live. “At the time, we were both in isolation – me in my hospital room bubble, and him in solitary confinement,” Jaouad told the Chronicle. “We also shared a heightened awareness of our mortality. ‘I know that our situations are different,’ he wrote, ‘but the threat of death lurks in both our shadows.'”
Jaouad shared letters with Jones during her three years of cancer treatment and continues to do so. After being declared cancer-free, she traveled to Livingston – the home of death row at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice‘s Polunsky Unit – to meet Jones face to face. That visit is chronicled in Between Two Kingdoms, the bestselling memoir she released in February. This week, Jaouad published an essay about Jones in The New York Times, trying to save his life.
Jaouad said that Jones has always been honest in his letters about his childhood and his crime. Jones was born into poverty, surrounded by drugs, gangs, and violence. His mother was the first to point a gun at him. He was forced by older siblings to have sex with his stepsister at the age of 7. He twice shot himself, once through the hand to prove his toughness to gang members and another time in the chest, wanting to die. He was addicted to drugs by his early teens and, when he was 20, he bludgeoned to death one of the few people who had shown him kindness – his great-aunt, Berthena Bryant – after she denied him money for cocaine.
As Jones awaited trial, he confessed the crime and apologized to Bryant’s family members, who were, after all, his family members, too. At the trial, they described his struggles with mental illness and addiction, and his profound remorse. This did not stop jurors from deciding he was irredeemable and sending him to death row in 2001, where he has now spent half his life.
Bryant’s sister and closest friend, Mattie Long, has developed a strong relationship with Jones. “Because I was so close to Bert, her death hurt me a lot,” Long recently wrote to Gov. Greg Abbott. “[But] Quintin can’t bring her back. I can’t bring her back. I’m writing this to ask you to please spare his life.”
Jones is requesting that a spiritual adviser be allowed in the death chamber for his May 19 execution. Until 2019, TDCJ only allowed its own employee chaplains to accompany prisoners into the chamber. Several U.S. Supreme Court rulings then led the agency first to stop allowing advisers altogether, and now (as of April 22) allowing personal advisers who’ve passed background checks. Jones’ is the first execution scheduled under the new rule.
Jones’ attorney, Michael Mowla, had challenged the TDCJ policy as a violation of federal law protecting prisoners’ religious freedom. He’s also filed a new habeas corpus motion in state court, arguing that Jones’ rights were violated by unscientific testimony from prosecutors at his original trial. Meanwhile, Jaouad and others are asking the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute Jones’ sentence to life in prison without parole, and have set up a website at clemencyforquin.com laying out the many facets of his case. As of this writing, the website has collected over 80,000 signatures supporting clemency. If his execution isn’t stopped, he’ll be the first person executed in Texas since Billy Joe Wardlow last summer.
This article appears in May 14 • 2021.
