I’m incarcerated in a women’s prison. So-called “true crime” shows prey on us, alter our stories, and take advantage of our trauma. I would know—I’ve been the subject of at least three docudramas.
Two years after Elena’s death, I try to understand why I was given a child just to lose her.
Prosecutors recently dropped murder charges against McCarter, a domestic violence survivor who killed her estranged husband in an act of self-defense. Her legal ordeal shows how much more we must do to show up for women.
In September, an Iowa judge sentenced Pieper Lewis, a Black teenager who was trafficked and sexually assaulted, to community supervision after she pleaded guilty to stabbing one of her abusers to death. Some hailed the sentence as compassionate. But facts about supervision say otherwise.
Many of the 230,000 women and girls in U.S. jails and prisons were abuse survivors before they entered the system. Research for The Appeal shows that at least 30 percent of those serving time on murder or manslaughter charges were protecting themselves or a loved one from physical or sexual violence.
The state has recommended the release of 10 women at a coronavirus-ravaged prison—but Governor John Bel Edwards still hasn’t signed the paperwork.
In 1996, Michele Benjamin was sentenced to life without parole for killing a man who she said solicited her for sex and menaced her with a weapon in New Orleans. A Supreme Court decision led her to be re-sentenced to life with a chance at parole in 2016. Today, a parole hearing brings the possibility of freedom.