Oklahoma man gets life without parole for hate crime killing
TULSA, Okla. — A 63-year-old Oklahoma man convicted of murder and a hate crime in the fatal shooting of his Lebanese neighbour was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Stanley Vernon Majors was convicted earlier this month of gunning down 37-year-old Khalid Jabara outside of his Tulsa home in August 2016. The murder charge carried a life sentence, and the jury recommended that Majors never get the chance to go free — a recommendation the judge followed Tuesday.
The jury foreman, Randall Hardee, told The Tulsa World that the jury agreed that Majors was having mental problems, but that he also understood the consequences of his actions. Jurors also found it difficult to ignore that Majors had antagonized the Jabara family for years, he said.
“I don’t know how somebody could treat a whole other family like that,” Hardee said. “At the end of the day, I thought Mr. Majors was just an incredibly unhappy man who just wanted to take it out on the world.”