Latest news with #wrongfulconviction
CTV News
29 minutes ago
- General
- CTV News
Man exonerated of murder charge speaks
Winnipeg Watch A man recently exonerated of first-degree murder charges after spending more than 20 years in prison is happy to be free, but says the stigma will linger.
The Independent
4 hours ago
- Health
- The Independent
Exonerated US death row inmate turned campaigner dies in Irish house fire
Sadness has been expressed after former US death row inmate turned campaigner Sunny Jacobs died following a fire in Ireland. The 77-year-old yoga teacher who was originally from New York was found dead following the blaze at the Sunny Healing Centre in rural Co Galway. She spent 17 years in prison in the US, a number of them on death row, following a conviction for murder. Ms Jacobs was released in 1992 after her sentence and imprisonment were quashed. Irish police said emergency services were alerted to the incident at Gleann Mhic Mhuireann in Casla at around 6.20am on Tuesday. Gardai said the bodies of a woman aged in her 70s and a man in his 30s were recovered from inside the home after the blaze was brought under control by firefighters. They have also appealed for any witnesses to come forward. 'Both bodies were taken to the mortuary at University Hospital Galway for post-mortem examinations, while the scene was preserved for a technical probe,' they said. 'The results of the post-mortem examinations will inform the direction of garda inquiries.' A statement on Ms Jacobs' campaign website confirmed she had died in the incident, along with her caretaker. 'We don't have many details at this time, but investigation is ongoing and our contacts in Galway are providing us with information as it comes in,' they said. 'Sunny was a fierce advocate for justice and a guiding light for many. 'As someone who survived wrongful conviction – including five years in solitary confinement under a sentence of death, and 17 years of imprisonment total – she knew the difficulties of incarceration and the struggle to regain one's footing after being exonerated and released.' They said that Ms Jacobs, along with her late husband Peter Pringle, established The Sunny Centre to help other exonerees through the difficult process of building new lives after being released from prison. 'Together, they brought many exonerees to the centre in Ireland to help them process their trauma and move forward to the next steps of their healing,' they said. 'During and after the pandemic, they continued to support and counsel exonerees remotely by video and phone. 'After Peter's passing in 2022, Sunny continued the work of The Sunny Centre. She hosted exonerees and started a training programme for those who wanted to carry forward her vision to establish similar centres for exonerees within their communities.' The statement concluded: 'Fair winds and full sails on your crossing, Sunny. Your memory is a blessing to us.'
BreakingNews.ie
10 hours ago
- Health
- BreakingNews.ie
Woman who died in Galway house fire was a death row survivor wrongfully convicted of murder
A 76-year-old woman who died in a house fire in Galway has been named as Sonia 'Sunny' Jacobs, who served 17 years in prison, including time on death row, after she was wrongfully convicted of the murder of a US policeman and a Canadian constable. Ms Jacobs perished after a blaze broke out at her bungalow near Casla in Go Galway on Tuesday morning. Advertisement A man in his 30s, who is understood to have been her carer, also died in the incident at Gleann Mhic Mhuireann. Gardaí and the emergency services were alerted to the fire at 6:20am on Tuesday. The bodies of the man and woman were recovered from inside the property. The scene has been preserved for a technical examination. Postmortem examinations will be carried out at University Hospital Galway. Ms Jacobs was placed on death row in Florida in 1976 having been wrongfully convicted of a double murder. Advertisement Her son was nine whilst her daughter was just 10 months old when she went to prison. When Sunny Jacobs was freed in 1992, her son Eric was a married father whilst her daughter Christina was 16 years old. Ms Jacobs told the BBC in 2017 that when she went to jail when she was a 'mother, a daughter and a wife' and by the time she came out she was a 'grandmother, an orphan and a widow.' Ms Jacobs and Jesse Joseph Tafero, the father of the younger of her two children, were tried separately, convicted, and sentenced to death by the same judge for the murders of two police officers at a rest stop off of Interstate 95 in Broward County, Florida in 1976. Ms Jacobs and Mr Tafero had been travelling with their two young children Eric and Christina when their car broke down. They were trying to get home to North Carolina. A man Jesse knew called Walter Rhodes agreed to drive the couple and their children home. Advertisement Sunny fell asleep with the children in the back seat, but was startled awake by a policeman knocking on the window of the parked car. The officer was Philip Black, a Florida Highway Patrol trooper and his friend Donald Irwin a Canadian constable who was on holiday. She said that gunfire broke out and Black and Irwin were slain. Jacobs and Tafero maintained from the beginning that Rhodes had shot the officers, and that they had nothing to do with it. Although there were two eyewitnesses to events surrounding the murders, neither contradicted Jacobs' and Tafero's version of what happened. Nor was their version contradicted by physical evidence. Both Tafero and Rhodes had gunpowder residue on their hands, a fact that was consistent with Tafero's claim that Rhodes handed him the gun after shooting the officers. There was no gunpowder residue on Jacobs' hands. Advertisement The convictions of Jacobs and Tafero rested primarily on the testimony of Rhodes, who was allowed to plead guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. In 1981, the Florida Supreme Court commuted the sentence of Ms Jacobs to life in prison. Mr Tafero was not so lucky. He was put to death in 1990. After the execution, Mr Rhodes confessed he had fired the fatal shots confirming both Jesse's and Sunny's long-maintained innocence. Sunny was freed in 1992 when she was 45 years old. Ms Jacob's subsquently met and married Peter Pringle in 2013. Mr Pringle had been sentenced to death in 1980 in Dublin for the murder of two gardaí, John Morley and Henry Byrne, in a bank raid in Ballaghaderreen in Roscommon. Advertisement He served 15 years in jail before he was released in 1995 after his convictions for the July 1980 murders were deemed unsafe. Following her release from prison Sunny Jacob's campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty. She met Mr Pringle at an Amnesty International event in 1998. He was also involved in advocacy work. Mr Pringle died on New Year's Eve 2022 at the age of 84. In an interview with The Guardian newspaper in 2013 Mr Pringle said that he was 'deeply touched' when he heard about the story of Ms Jacobs. 'I just had to talk to her. There was this spiritual connection there." Ms Jacobs told the paper that she had to learn how to do things all over again when she was freed from prison in 1992. 'I had to learn how to make a living, be a mother and simply be a person again. It was very difficult, but at the same time I wanted to get past it. I wouldn't say my experience haunts me, but it's always there. Everyone gets challenged in life and you can either spend the rest of your life looking backwards, or you can make a decision to keep going. That's the choice I made." Ireland Timetable of case against former Armagh GAA captai... Read More While Ms Jacobs was in prison her parents, who looked after her children, died in a plane crash. She said that her focus was on rebuilding her relationship with her children once she was freed. In her Guardian interview she said that she had never expected to find love again. "I'd given up on meeting anyone. I just accepted that not everyone was meant to have a partner. But then I met Peter." The pair set up the Sunny Healing Centre in rural Connemara where they offered a space for healing and respite to individuals who had faced miscarriages of justice. Ms Jacobs was also an author and spoke at universities and conferences. Oscar winning actress Susan Sarandon played Sunny in the movie 'The Exonerated' which was released in 2005.
The Guardian
a day ago
- General
- The Guardian
‘I was let out': New Orleans man who escaped jail pleads case on social media
A man still at large after escaping from a New Orleans jail last month appears to have taken to social media to plead his case to the public. In a video that quickly went viral, the man identifying himself as Antoine Massey – one of 10 prisoners who fled from the Orleans Justice center (OJC) on 16 May – said he was wrongfully accused and held up papers he said corroborate his innocence. 'They say that I broke out,' he said, speaking directly to the camera. 'I didn't break out. I was let out.' Authorities have been searching the New Orleans area for more than two weeks since the men squeezed through a hole behind a toilet in the jail. Graffiti left on the wall included the message 'To Easy LoL' with an arrow pointing to the gap. Eight of the 10 have been apprehended, along with more than a dozen people – many of them friends and family – arrested on allegations of helping the group with food, cash, transportation or shelter, according to court documents. Along with Massey, Derrick Groves has not yet been found. Officials have not yet verified that the person in the footage was Massey. But the man in the video, clad in a sweatsuit and sitting on a stool in a minimally furnished kitchen, has the facial tattoos that match Massey's. He called for an investigation into his conviction and asked for help from public figures, including Donald Trump and Meek Mill. Holding up a wrinkled paper to the camera, he claimed he had a signed affidavit from a woman he is accused of assaulting saying the allegations are false. 'If you was an innocent person,' he said, 'why would you stay in jail?' Massey was being held on the theft of a vehicle and for a domestic abuse charge involving strangulation when he escaped. He has a history of both domestic violence charges and escaping from incarceration. At the age of 15 he broke out of a juvenile detention center with five others using metal shackles to break a window and was on the run for weeks, CNN reported. Massey slipped under a fence in the exercise yard of a detention center at age 27. Court records show there was a third attempt, along with several cases alleging he 'tampered and/or removed the court-ordered GPS monitor'. Now 32, Massey appears to be claiming this attempt to get out is justified. Meanwhile, the FBI, US Marshals Service, state and local police, and the Orleans parish sheriff's office have continued the search. As of Monday, the reward was set for $50,000 if information leads to the arrest of Groves or Massey. In a statement, the Orleans parish sheriff's office said they were aware of the video and encouraged Massey to turn himself in. 'If the individual depicted in the video is indeed Antoine Massey, we strongly urge him to come forward and turn himself in to the proper authorities,' the statement said. 'Cooperating with law enforcement is in his best interest and may help avoid additional charges. It is important that justice is served appropriately and that due process is followed.' The Associated Press contributed reporting
CBC
a day ago
- General
- CBC
Manitoba court quashes murder convictions for Métis man who spent decades in prison
Social Sharing A Métis man who spent more than two decades in prison had his murder convictions quashed by the Manitoba Court of Appeal last week. In 1997, Robert Sanderson was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder in connection with the August 1996 killings of Jason Gross, Russel Krowetz and Stefan Zurstag at a home in West Kildonan. Sanderson was sentenced to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for 25 years. He has always maintained his innocence. He appealed his convictions in 1999, but the appeal was dismissed by the Manitoba Court of Appeal. Later that year, Sanderson was denied leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. In 2017, 20 years after he was convicted, Innocence Canada applied for a ministerial review of Sanderson's case, the organization said in a Monday news release. Flawed DNA testing conducted on a hair found at the scene had connected Sanderson to the crime at the time of his conviction. More advanced tests done in the mid-2000s showed that the hair samples didn't match Sanderson or the two other men who were charged in the case. Other new evidence considered by the appeal court was that an eyewitness was given "substantial sums of money by the authorities pursuant to an agreement after he testified at the trial," Innocence Canada said. Sanderson was denied bail in 2018, but was released on full parole a short time later. After his release, Sanderson told CBC News in 2023 that he had found healing through embracing his culture and creating art inspired by his Métis and Ojibway heritage. He moved to Victoria, B.C. In 2023, then-federal justice minister David Lametti found there was likely a miscarriage of justice in Sanderson's case. Lametti referred the case to the Manitoba Court of Appeal for a new hearing. Last week, the court quashed the convictions and ordered a new trial. Innocence Canada said in its news release that the Crown has advised the court "it will exercise its discretion and enter a stay of proceedings on public interest grounds."
