Bio 

Arthur James Julius was born on September 18, 1946. He was from Birmingham, Alabama, and was 43 years old at the time of his execution. Julius had a prior murder conviction before the killing of Susie Bell Sanders. Court records state that on June 9, 1972, he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in Birmingham, Alabama, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

By January 1978, Julius was serving that life sentence but had access to temporary release through a work-release or prison pass program. On January 29, 1978, he was released on an eight-hour pass from the Draper Work Release Center near Montgomery. During that release, prosecutors later said he raped and murdered his cousin, Susie Bell Sanders.

Murder Story

On January 29, 1978, Arthur James Julius was released from the Draper Work Release Center on a one-day pass. His cousin, Willie Clayton, checked him out of the facility shortly before noon. During the trip to Montgomery, Julius asked when Clayton had last seen Susie Bell Sanders. Clayton later loaned Julius his car during the afternoon.

Susie Bell Sanders, 29, was found dead inside her Montgomery home by her father. Court records described the scene as disturbed, with furniture knocked over and the telephone cord pulled from the wall. Forensic evidence showed sexual assault, multiple injuries, carpet-related abrasions, and manual strangulation as the cause of death.

The prosecution presented circumstantial evidence placing Julius at or near Sanders’s home during the relevant period. A neighbor saw Clayton’s car outside Sanders’s house around 5:15 p.m. A relative testified that Sanders said she was speaking with her cousin “Bobo,” a nickname family members associated with Julius. When Julius returned the car, a witness noticed a fresh cut under his eye.

Investigators also presented forensic evidence. Hair found in Julius’s underwear was said to share characteristics with Sanders’s head hair, and fibers found on Julius’s body and clothing matched fibers from the victim’s home. Julius also returned to the work-release facility with money and cigarettes, although he had reportedly said earlier that day that he had only eight cents.

Julius gave inconsistent accounts of his activities that day. At one point, he said he had been at Sanders’s home and that she was alive when he left. In a later statement, he denied seeing her that day. At trial, he offered a different account involving another relative and denied killing Sanders.

Julius was convicted and sentenced to death for Sanders’s murder, but that conviction was reversed after the United States Supreme Court struck down Alabama’s then-existing death penalty procedure. He was retried in 1982 under Alabama’s modified capital sentencing statute, convicted again, and sentenced to death.

The Alabama courts affirmed his conviction and death sentence. The courts found aggravating circumstances including that Julius committed the murder while under a sentence of imprisonment, that he had a prior violent felony conviction, and that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel.

Arthur James Julius was executed by electrocution in Alabama on November 17, 1989. He was put to death for the rape and murder of Susie Bell Sanders while serving a life sentence for his earlier 1972 murder conviction.