News outlets reported late Thursday that the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity chapter at the University of Oklahoma had lawyered up as the fallout continued from a viral video of its members singing a racist chant on a party bus.
The fraternity chapter’s board voted to hire high-profile attorney Stephen Jones as it mulled whether to take legal action against the university and its president, David Boren. Boren severed the school’s ties with the fraternity chapter earlier in the week and ordered all its members to vacate their frat house.
Jones said in a news conference Friday afternoon that he wouldn’t rule out filing a lawsuit against the university, although he and the members of OU’s SAE chapter would prefer to come to terms with the university administration outside of the legal arena. Jones said that he’d been retained to ensure that the frat members receive due process before the university and the fraternity’s national organization, but also to ensure the students’ safety as they face physical threats from other students on campus.
Jones is best known for representing Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, but there are other aspects of his biography that are worth surfacing.
He represented Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh
Representing Timothy McVeigh is Jones’ calling card, even if it wasn’t a gig he particularly relished. Jones was appointed to lead McVeigh’s defense team after several other lawyers dropped out. When McVeigh came to believe Jones was lying to him and botching his defense, he successfully petitioned an appeals court to have Jones fired. Jones would later accuse McVeigh of being the liar.
He ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate against OU’s president
Jones mounted three campaigns for elected office between 1974 and 1980. He was unsuccessful yet again in 1990, when he ran for U.S. Senate as a Republican — against none other than the Democrat incumbent David Boren, the current president of the University of Oklahoma. Jones received just 17 percent of the vote in that election.
He’s previously taken on unpopular college-related cases
In 1970 Jones took up the case of Keith Green, who was arrested for carrying a Vietcong flag during an anti-war demonstration at OU just a day after National Guardsmen killed four students at Kent State University. Jones was fired from the law firm employing him at the time for taking Green’s case.
Soon after, Jones represented political activist Abbie Hoffman when Oklahoma State University refused to let him speak there.
He defended another of Oklahoma’s worst mass murderers
Before Jones defended Timothy McVeigh, he defended Bobby Wayne Collins. Collins had been convicted of murdering four people — a husband, wife and their two young children — which was Oklahoma’s worst mass killing at the time. Jones represented Collins during his appeal in 1977 and successfully got his death sentence reduced to life in prison.
He once worked for Richard Nixon
While attending law school at OU, Jones spent time in New York City working as a research assistant to Richard Nixon before he was elected President.
This post has been updated.
