After 16 years of delays, a jury is seated in 2009 double homicide case
Special to the Times | Donovan Quintero
A portrait of Clyde “Sonny Jim” James rests in the dirt at the Dean C. Jackson Memorial Arena at the Navajo Nation Fairgrounds on Oct. 28, 2025. Sixteen years after his death, his daughter, Sonlatsa “Sunshine” Jim, continues to seek justice while honoring his legacy as a Modoc cowboy and a beloved figure in the Navajo rodeo community.
By Donovan Quintero
Special to the Times
GRANTS, N.M. – Sonlatsa Jim walked into the Cibola County courthouse Monday carrying a feeling she said she has learned to expect after 16 years of postponements: “anxiety.”
“It almost doesn’t feel real because we’ve been advocating for so long to go to trial and it’s actually happening,” Jim said after a jury was seated in the case against Danny Stanfield, accused of shooting and killing her father, Clyde “Sonny Jim” James, and rancher Wayne Johnson in 2009.
For Jim and her daughter, Zunne-Bah Jim, the moment was more than another court date. It was the first day they could finally see a path toward a verdict in a case they say has shaped their family’s grief, their advocacy and their understanding of how border town systems treat Native families who come looking for justice.
That verdict will be determined by a jury asked to decide whether Stanfield is guilty.
“I’m just, already just setting myself up saying I don’t have faith in the justice system,” Sonlatsa Jim said.
She said seeing Stanfield in court sharpened that distrust into anger.
To read the full article, please see the Feb. 5, 2026, edition of the Navajo Times.
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