Julius Jones has spent nearly half of his life on death row. In 2002, an Oklahoma County court convicted the Black college student for the 1999 capital murder of a White insurance executive. “The Last Defense,” a new documentary series from JuVee Productions examines the system that pushed Jones (who maintained his innocence through multiple denied appeals) and others onto death row. “The docuseries is important so people can understand that it is not always fair,” Viola Davis says about the show—which she co-executive produces with husband Julius Tennon—in the trailer. According to ABC, ”The Last Defense” illuminates this idea by interviewing attorneys, family and trial witnesses. The series highlights possible misconduct and bias that lead to death sentences. This includes the attorney argument that prosecutors used racist rhetoric to justify Jones’ punishment, which Oklahoma courts disproportionately enforced on Black citizens. Learn more when “The Last Defense” premieres tonight (June 12) on ABC.<doc-sep>A new ABC show will offer a last defense to Darlie Routier and Julius Jones, two prisoners who have spent decades behind bars on death row.The seven-episode summer series, produced by Viola Davis and her husband, Julius Tennon, who are the principals of JuVee Productions, begins Tuesday.She taught her law students "How To Get Away With Murder," but as that TV series continues, Annalise Keating, played by Viola Davis, has also become a champion of those who can't find justice anywhere else.The actress explainsis in the same spirit. "This new series will make people lean in further becauseis fiction.is non-fiction. It's real," she said.Tennon explains their relationship this way: "Viola's really got that creative edge, and I'm kinda more of a leader. I'm kinda more of a do-it-all guy that does it all so we kinda stay out of each other's way, but we actually really love working together. "They've worked together in fiction on her show. Now they are side-by-side again with even higher stakes. "It's like Barbara Jordan, the great U.S. Congresswoman, said, 'What Americans want is simple. They want an America as good as its promise,'" Davis explained.The show aims to explore and expose flaws in the country's justice system by examining two death row cases.Darlie Routier has always denied stabbing her two young sons to death.Julius Jones was a 21-year-old college student found guilty of murder, but he maintains his innocence. "It gives a face to those people we have dehumanized in the past," Davis said.Her husband added, "It's really important to have the public take a look in and draw their own conclusions."<doc-sep>From Making a Murderer and The Keepers to The Confession Tapes, Evil Genius and The Staircase, Netflix currently has a virtual monopoly on true-crime television. That situation has been a boon for viewers, who are now inundated on a near-monthly basis with fantastic long-form documentary investigations into cases that are both bizarre and beguiling. One can imagine the Big Three (CBS, NBC and ABC) feeling a bit irritated by this turn of events, given that they’ve been tilling similar toil—in somewhat more condensed, cursory form—for decades with shows like 48 Hours, Dateline NBC, 20/20 and Primetime Live. Those series have long served as the nation’s favored source for non-fiction stories about grisly murders, horrific abuse and confounding kidnappings. And thus it comes as little surprise that at least one of those networks is now looking to regain its footing in the genre with a new program that resembles one of those aforementioned streaming-service offerings—albeit with a slight twist. Executive-produced by Viola Davis and Julius Tennon, The Last Defense is a seven-part weekly ABC show (premiering Tuesday, June 12) whose premise is that the justice system, particularly when it comes to capital punishment verdicts, often gets things wrong—an opinion underlined by the claim, made by Davis in opening-credit narration, that an average of five death-penalty convictions are overturned each year. The two sagas that serve as its focus are thus presented, from the outset, as miscarriages of justice in which those sentenced to die are, in fact, victims of a legal process that’s inefficient or simply doesn’t care about playing by the rules. By taking that upfront tack, it embraces an overtly biased stance toward its subject matter, even as it simultaneously attempts to generate the same sort of “Are they guilty?” mystery that’s made Netflix’s efforts such hits. In trying to have it both ways, however, it stumbles at many of its most crucial moments. And more damaging still, it seems to have chosen the wrong cases to prove its hypothesis. For its first four episodes, The Last Defense concentrates on Darlie Routier, a bubbly blonde Rowlett, Texas, wife and mother of three who—in her version of events—awoke on her couch in the early morning hours of June 6, 1996, to find a white male standing over her. This intruder had viciously stabbed her two young sons, Devon (6) and Damon (5), and after a confrontation that left her with knife wounds to her arms and throat, she chased him out of the house. As her husband Darin (who’d been asleep upstairs with their infant son) came to her aid, Routier called 911, but to no avail—her boys were dead. After inspecting the residence, responding police officers and crime-scene investigators quickly came to the conclusion that Routier had done this to her own brood, and then given herself self-inflicted injuries to make it look like someone else had committed this heinous deed. A bloody sock found in a nearby alleyway was the best proof defense lawyers had that Routier was telling the truth, while window-screen fibers and blood spatter were wielded by prosecutor Greg Davis as evidence that she was responsible for this massacre. More problematic for Routier was a video of her throwing a cemetery birthday party for Devon and Damon in which she playfully danced around, and shot silly string at, their graves. That clip didn’t definitively prove anything. But considering that Routier was a woman claiming to be grieving unthinkable losses, it turned out to be the nail in her coffin, as jurors—who watched it more than nine times during deliberations—found her guilty and sentenced her to death. The Last Defense provides the district attorney’s office with considerable time to make its case against Routier, which goes some way toward offsetting the show’s partiality in her favor. And by the end of its first four episodes, directed by Jeremiah Crowell, it succeeds—via interviews with defenders, relatives and Routier herself—in creating the impression that she may not have gotten a fair shake, thanks to a trial that was more interested in assassinating her character than providing a believable motive or version of events. Reasonable doubt, in the final tally, probably exists. Unfortunately, what the series doesn’t do is conclusively convince one that Routier is innocent—a shortcoming that also plagues its second case, tackled in the last three episodes by director Amani Martin. That concerns the 2002 conviction of 21-year-old African-American Julius Jones, a kid attending the University of Oklahoma on an academic scholarship, for murdering Caucasian father of two Paul Howell in a carjacking-gone-awry in the suburb of Edmond. In that incident, it’s apparent that Jones’ lawyers didn’t provide him with an adequate defense (because they outright admit they didn’t). And furthermore, it appears likely that one of the informants who helped land Jones on death row—his casual friend Chris “Woodside” Jordan—was actually the individual responsible for the crime, and escaped death row by cutting a deal. As with Routier, Jones’ defenders routinely proclaim that he’s being railroaded. Yet The Last Defense (which, in Jones’ segments, offers no counterbalancing prosecutorial voices) often makes its case by doing the very things it accuses prosecutors of perpetrating: forwarding circumstantial theories and character-besmirching innuendo (in the absence of concrete evidence that might absolve their clients) to create doubt. Moreover, the series routinely informs viewers at key dramatic moments about certain players’ refusal to participate on-camera, as a way of suggesting their villainy/culpability and, by extension, Routier and Jones’ blamelessness—a device that reeks of manipulation. All the while, its dramatic recreations are of an unnecessary sort. And especially during the Jones-related chapters—which eventually fall back on racism as the cause for his conviction, this despite the fact that Jordan is also African-American, and one of them almost surely did it—specious theorizing and repetition soon take precedence over airtight argumentation. Both Routier and Jones’ guilt seems open for debate—as does, in the end, their innocence. In surer hands, that ambiguity might have enlivened the series. Between its calculating tactics and unpersuasive reasoning, however, The Last Defense proves guided by activist intentions that interfere with its objectivity to the point of clouding its judgment.<doc-sep>
Darlie Routier has always maintained she's innocent, even after spending nearly two decades on death row for stabbing her two sons to death. Now, her case will be featured on a new ABC show, The Last Defense, which aims to explore the cases of possibly-innocent people who are behind bars. As KABC-TV (Los Angeles) reports, actress Viola Davis made a name for herself playing Annalise Keating, the How To Get Away With Murder law professor who took an interest in getting justice for the wrongly imprisoned. Now Viola has let her character inform her professional life: she and her husband, Julius Tennon, created the new show in that vein. "This new series will make people lean in further because How To Get Away With Murder is fiction. The Last Defense is non-fiction. It's real." The first order of business for The Last Defense will be the case of Darlie Routier. For a few weeks in the summer of 1996, the story of Darlie and her two sons, Devon and Damon Routier, dominated the news. As the Dallas Morning News reported in 2016, early in the morning of June 6, the two boys were stabbed to death while they slept. Paramedics found 6-year-old Devon dead at the scene; so severe were his wounds that he had been stabbed all the way through his abdomen. Damon, who was still alive but gasping for his final breaths, had been stabbed in the back. He died a short time later. Former prosecutor has no doubt Darlie Routier is guilty of killing her son https://t.co/7rWATfQ9Wf pic.twitter.com/eDhVYs4xYS — WFAA (@wfaa) June 13, 2018 Darlie also had stab wounds, including one slash across her throat that was within two millimeters of her carotid artery. Her husband, Darin Routier, supposedly sleeping through it all, was unharmed. Routier claimed that an intruder entered the home and stabbed them to death. Prosecutors, however, said that her story didn't add up. Her wounds appeared self-inflicted, according to a medical expert, and the notion that Darin slept through it all seemed far-fetched. Darlie was convicted of capital murder in 1997 and given the death penalty. Now, two years after her sentence, not only does Darlie continue to maintain her innocence, but there are some still some parts of her story that raise questions. The biggest question centers on a bloody sock found in an alley behind the Routiers' home about 75 yards away. Darlie maintains that it belonged to the real murderer, and those who support her claim note that it would have been next to impossible for Darlie to murder her children, call 911, run 150 yards round trip, and then stab herself almost fatally, all while not leaving a single drop of blood on the ground. The Last Defense airs Tuesday nights at 10 p.m. Eastern Time on ABC.