Friday 16 November 2007

Stolen Time


SUNNY JACOBS and her boyfriend were falsely arrested and convicted of the murder of two police. She had her baby girl and 8 year old boy with her at the shooting event she witnessed, but did not do. There was no forensic evidence that she shot the gun. The guy who did failed a polygraph and did a deal with the police.


Her juvenile son was held by police for 6 weeks, repeatedly interrogated and never provided with a lawyer. Sunny and her parents could not even locate him or the baby for weeks while Sunny was still expressing milk for her baby in jail.


This amazing woman spent the next 17 years fighting for justice. Finally exonerated of the murders with the real killer identified, it's too late for her boyfriend who was killed for a crime he did not commit in a botched electric chair execution that took 7 minutes and sent flames up from the top of his head. Sunny was not permitted to go to his funeral.


Her parents managed to gain custody of the children and did all they could to shelter them from the media and raise them with love. On the grandparents first 'holiday' in ten years, they die in a plane crash, and the children are subsequently separated until Sunny finally gets out of prison many years later. At an appeal hearing after their death, the drug addict who was bribed to lie against Sunny and whose testimony was crucial to convict her had a heart attack while in the witness box and DIED when she tried to make amends for her earlier false testimony.After 17 years of survival in the US prison system, 5 years in solitary confinement on death row, I read her " inspiring fight for justice" but I am not inspired, I am devastated. I ask, how can this happen? And I ask that over and over and over.


Obviously, I recommend this book. It brings a whole new meaning to the phrase trial and error.