The unique experience of wrongly convicted women

Over the course of Women’s History Month, we’ve heard from hundreds of courageous women who share in the hardship of advocating for a loved one in prison or the experience of being wrongly convicted themselves.

Below we highlight a few story submissions from the campaign.

Debra Milke of Arizona, wrongly convicted of the murder of her son, expressed the “bittersweet” feeling of being only the second woman in the U.S. exonerated from death row. Like Milke, 40% of women exonerees were convicted of harming children or loved ones:

While I did gain my hard-fought freedom, I am still left with a life without my son, making the victory bittersweet.
D E B R A  M.

And Michele B., an advocate for the wrongly convicted, who could no longer sit back and read another unjust story. Innocence stories have helped give her “purpose in life”:

I immediately went on to law school and spent my free time volunteering with the public defender’s office … I look forward to a lifetime of advocating for our nation’s most vulnerable people.
M I C H E L E  B.

Or Barbara S., who after being jailed in Fort Bragg became an activist for wrongly incarcerated women veterans, many of whom were victims of sexual assault.

A common form of punishment for reporting sexual assault is adverse discharges and incarceration to silence the victims. Therefore, [my organization’s] ongoing mission is to help homeless and transitioning women veterans fight for justice, expungement of their criminal records, and upgrade of their military discharge.
B A R B A R A  S.

Article originally published by the Innocence Project