Joshua Christon is out of prison after 19 years. On Monday, Oklahoma County Judge Kathryn Savage modified his first-degree murder conviction to second-degree murder, reduced the sentence to time served, and ordered him released immediately.
He had turned 38 only a few days earlier, so the term covered half his life. The conviction was reduced, not vacated, after his lawyers found old reports marked as never provided before trial. That label, and a modification that lowered the conviction rather than erased it, is what keeps this from reading as a simple release. A Yahoo report carries the account of Savage's order and of the file.
A Conviction From 2007
Christon was convicted of first-degree murder for the shooting death of Christopher Thompson in 2007, OKC Fox reported. The prison term and the case cover essentially the same years. A 2007 killing, a first-degree conviction, and 19 years inside brought him to a release in November 2026, days after he turned 38. He was about 19 when the incarceration began.
First-degree murder became second-degree murder. The sentence became the time he had already served, which means the reported order does not send him back to finish the original term. Second-degree murder is still a conviction for Thompson's killing. The years already spent were served on the first-degree count.
Lawyers who reexamined the file determined that evidence for the defense may have been suppressed before trial, about two decades ago. What the Yahoo account records from Monday is the modification itself: a lower degree of murder, a sentence treated as served, and an order that Christon be released at once.
Reports Labeled Not Provided in Discovery
That file review happened in 2024. Going through the case materials, Christon's lawyers found a stack of reports labeled "Not provided in discovery." Discovery is the pretrial exchange meant to put required parts of the state's file in the defense lawyer's hands before trial. A label like that, found in 2024, says those reports were marked as kept out of the exchange. The trial those lawyers describe was long over. Thompson had been dead for 17 years.
Published accounts say the materials included a .45-caliber handgun found months after the arrests. The Yahoo report described a pistol under Winford McKissick's mattress. Oklahoma Watch, in a September 2025 investigation, described a .45-caliber handgun under co-defendant Leroy McKissick's bed. Caliber, timing, and last name agree. The first name does not, and neither does mattress versus bed.
A gun recovered months later does not, by itself, identify who fired in 2007. Oklahoma Watch reported a separate sequence, under the name Leroy McKissick. Prosecutors, it wrote, permitted Kevin Parker to testify against Christon despite knowing McKissick had confessed to the murder in prison. The same investigation set Christon's case beside Richard Glossip's and said both hinged on withheld evidence and a handwritten note.
Deaths That Complicated the Agreement
District Attorney Vicki Behenna said the November 9 agreement had become complicated by the deaths of Christon's original attorney and a handwriting expert. Oklahoma Watch has said the case, like Glossip's, hinged on withheld evidence and a handwritten note. Behenna's explanation now sits next to that comparison. The expert is dead. So is Christon's original attorney.
The years make those absences concrete. Thompson was shot in 2007, and Christon was convicted of first-degree murder for that death. The labeled reports surfaced in 2024. Oklahoma Watch published in September 2025. On November 9, 2026, Savage changed the conviction and ordered the release. By then, Behenna said, the original attorney and the handwriting expert were gone.
The order is plainer than the path to it. First-degree murder became second-degree murder. The sentence was reduced to time served. After 19 years incarcerated, Christon was to be released immediately.
Official Exonerations Are a Different Count
A reduced homicide conviction is not the official exoneration counted in a March 2025 Oklahoman opinion column. The column said 46 former Oklahoma inmates had been officially exonerated since 1989, together accounting for 465 lost years. More than half of those 46, it said, were overturned based on some form of prosecutorial misconduct. The column ran more than a year before Monday's order.
The National Registry of Exonerations marks 1989 as the year of the first DNA exoneration. It used to keep pre-1989 and post-1989 cases in separate databases. Those lists are now combined. The column's Oklahoma figure starts at that same year, and it counts convictions officially undone.
Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice estimates that up to 30% of cases in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Pontotoc counties, from the periods it examined, may involve prosecutorial misconduct. Researchers reviewed more than 500 current Oklahoma cases of people still serving time and narrowed the focus to nine where misconduct was considered highly probable.
Oklahoma County, where Christon was convicted and where Savage entered Monday's order, is one of the three counties in that estimate. "Up to" and "may" belong in the sentence. The nine-case cut is Appleseed's judgment of high probability, not a list of court findings.
A Certificate, and One Semester Left
The years inside left a different record. Christon earned a paralegal certificate while incarcerated and is one semester away from a bachelor's degree in Christian Studies from Oklahoma Baptist University, the Yahoo report said.
He had just turned 38 when the release was ordered. The certificate is done. The semester is not. He leaves with the sentence reduced to the 19 years already served, and with that last term of coursework still in front of him at Oklahoma Baptist.
