Description
In 2024, Oklahoma legislators passed an unusual law: It would create a pathway to freedom for people who could prove that domestic violence was a substantial contributing factor to their crime — even if that crime was first-degree murder. Members of a “survivor sisterhood” who’d found a connection in their shared histories of abuse hoped that, perhaps, they would all soon be going home. But, as reporter Pamela Colloff discovered, nothing would play out as expected.
Transcript
Editor’s Note: “Paper Trail” is produced as an audio series. If you are able, we encourage you to listen to the series. Transcripts are for reference only and may contain typos. Please confirm accuracy before quoting.
Jessica Lussenhop: ProPublica. Investigative Journalism in the public interest.
A heads up: In this episode, you’re going to hear about domestic partner abuse. If you’d rather not, maybe skip this one.
As a reporter, I have covered a lot of subjects, but the one I’ve spent the most time on is the criminal justice system. Writing about police and crime and prisons. And, over the years, that has had one very tangible result: I can’t watch “Law & Order” anymore. I can’t.
This … aversion … is really to a specific kind of “Law & Order” episode where the world it depicts is too tidy. The villains are so villainous, like, an abusive husband who murders his wife. In the moment it’s, like, hell yes, lock that guy up, TV off and I’m ready for bed! It’s supposed to feel really satisfying. But reporting on this stuff, even when I was just a baby reporter, you quickly learn that a lot of the millions of people locked up in U.S. prisons are NOT cartoon villains. That’s just not how real life works.
Pamela Colloff: As we know from our reporting, there aren’t really black-and-white narratives. There’s a lot of gray.
Lussenhop: This is Pam Colloff. Also not a huge fan of “Law & Order.” She writes for ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine about the criminal justice system.
Colloff: I primarily look at wrongful convictions, junk forensic science and flawed eyewitness testimony.
Lussenhop: I devour her stories when they come out. Her investigations have helped get multiple innocent men out of prison, including one on death row. I recently heard about her latest project, which had this really messy question at the heart of it. It focused on a group of people in prison who are not claiming to be innocent. They’re saying: We’re both perpetrators and victims.
Colloff: So these were usually, but not always, women who were abused and who had struck back at their abusers and had, had killed them.
Lussenhop: Women who murdered their abusers. If the abuse was a major reason for their crime, should they spend less time in prison? A new law was trying to give people like them a pathway out.
Colloff: The idea of that law, it’s that if someone is incarcerated and they are a survivor of domestic violence and they can prove to a judge that their crime stemmed from their abuse, then a judge should reconsider their sentences.
Lussenhop: All of this was all happening in Oklahoma. Oklahoma has one of the highest rates of female incarceration in the country. The U.S. has some of the highest incarceration rates in the world. We’re fourth behind El Salvador, Cuba and Turkmenistan. So this law seemed like it was part of Oklahoma’s attempt to address this in some way. The law was pretty radical. It could theoretically let people convicted of first-degree murder out of prison.
Colloff: To me it was, like, what the hell is going on in Oklahoma? What is happening? I wanna know. And so that was the beginning of almost a year of reporting.
Lussenhop: Pam went to Oklahoma to watch this new law roll out. And to meet the women at the center of it.
Colloff: And as I should have known, no criminal justice story is simple. It never turns out the way you think it’s going to. And that’s what happened here.
Lussenhop: I’m Jessica Lussenhop. This is “Paper Trail.”
REPORTING CALL, Colloff: But OK, going, going back to the beginning, would that, would that math be right, that you were about 7?
REPORTING CALL, Amanda Ross: Yes.
Lussenhop: Pam found out that this whole story starts back in the mid-’90s, with a young girl named Amanda. She had an aunt that she loved named April.
REPORTING CALL, Ross: I remember Aunt April always laughing a lot. And I loved her. I thought she was really cool. She had cool insights.
Lussenhop: Aunt April had gone to graduate school, and she ran her own business. But then April got engaged to this guy.
REPORTING CALL, Ross: But I remember he seemed kind of, like, scary. He was not very expressive. In fact, he seemed …
Lussenhop: Amanda remembers that there suddenly seemed to be a lot of chaos in April’s life.
REPORTING CALL, Ross: A lot of, like, panicked phone calls sometimes. Like, my mom picking up the phone and, like, saying, “April, I can’t deal with this right now,” or, um, uh, or my Grandma Louise kind of freaking out about April.
Lussenhop: April and her fiancé broke off the engagement, but they kept seeing each other. And then one night, something really terrible happened that changed everything for the family.
REPORTING CALL, Ross: I remember we stayed out really late at Grandma’s house, and Grandma was crying, and I was aware of what happened, but not the details. For a long time, I think I just knew that April had done something bad and she was in jail, and then I, I understood that she had killed someone.
Colloff: April killed her ex-fiancé in 1998. And then in 1999, she was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
REPORTING CALL, Ross: As a kid, I didn’t want to know everything. And my parents, you know, they’re, they’re very far-right. But they’re Christian, and they believe in, like, visiting the incarcerated and, like, supporting them. And I did feel very convicted. Like, I need to keep this connection, you know? Like, she’s, uh, my family.
Colloff: It never really added up for her. It never made sense to her why this really beautiful, wonderful woman who she had a strong relationship with, how it would be possible that she was capable of a crime like the one she was convicted of.
REPORTING CALL, Ross: Having to deconstruct that growing up was a long process.
Colloff: So Amanda, when she was a grown woman, started investigating all this and started trying to make sense of what had happened to April.
Lussenhop: Here’s what Amanda learned in her research: April met her ex-fiancé when she was 25. He was 37, the son of a very successful car dealer in Tulsa. Two of his previous romantic partners had gone to the police to report abuse, but April didn’t know that at first. He proposed two months into their relationship, which, not long afterward, turned violent.
Colloff: Stalking and rape and terrible abuse, verbal abuse.
Lussenhop: April called 911 at least 10 times to report him. She’d gotten three orders of protection against him. But the abuse didn’t stop.
Colloff: And that abuse was extremely well-documented. I saw eight police reports, and there were many witness statements from uninvolved bystanders. And they were really hair-raising.
Lussenhop: April’s niece Amanda eventually would read these witness statements herself. A neighbor once saw April’s ex-fiancé chase her down the driveway, grab her by the hair and drag her screaming back inside the house. A doctor who lived across the street from her ex once saw April sitting in her car, bloodied after he smashed the window and grabbed her keys so she couldn’t leave.
Colloff: But generally speaking, the local law enforcement in Tulsa did nothing.
REPORTING CALL, Ross: My understanding also is, like, drugs were involved. And you do stupid things when you’re on drugs.
Lussenhop: April would later testify that her life continued to fall apart when her ex introduced her to cocaine and to meth.
Colloff: April starts using drugs and her mental health deteriorates. And she was in a, in a really frightening situation.
Lussenhop: In the middle of the night one night, April went over to her ex’s house.
Colloff: The way she explains it, she went after just years and years of all of this to try to make peace with him. In her mind, this made sense at the time.
Lussenhop: According to April, after she refused to have sex with him, he raped her and threatened to kill her. She grabbed his handgun, and when he came towards her, she fired.
Colloff: What was in dispute in April’s case is, April and her attorneys have explained that this was an act of self-defense. That this was a situation where she was certain she was gonna die. And prosecutors, the Tulsa DA’s office, does not see it that way. And they characterized her at trial as this meth-crazed fabulist who went there looking for drugs and revenge.
Lussenhop: A jury found April guilty and sentenced her to life with the possibility of parole. But over the years, she was denied multiple times. The district attorney’s office opposed her release, saying, quote, “she presents a safety risk to the public.”
When Amanda learned all of this as an adult, she tried to figure out how to make sense of it. Was her aunt a perpetrator, a victim or both? But when she tried to ask these questions, not many people seemed up for having a nuanced discussion.
REPORTING CALL, Ross: I was getting questions like, “Well, why did she go to his house that night?”
REPORTING CALL, Colloff: Mm-hmm.
REPORTING CALL, Ross: And it’s like, well, why was she even dating him? Why was she even bothering to date men in general? You know, we can go what if, what if, what if. And then it was kind of just being ashamed to talk about her case too. I’m like, I don’t know that I can argue for her very well.
But then, as I’m talking with her, you start to really question things, and that was part of my journey.
Lussenhop: Eventually, Amanda came to believe that no matter what April’s level of culpability was in the crime, spending the rest of her life in prison was not a fair punishment.
REPORTING CALL, Ross: My family understood that what happened to her was not fair. She was punished too harshly, even if you think she did something wrong.
Lussenhop: Amanda started a blog, documenting her research into her aunt’s case, hoping someone would take an interest and help.
Colloff: And she kept approaching different people, lawyers, reporters, you name it, saying: My aunt’s case really, really needs attention. You really need to look at this.
Lussenhop: Pam wanted to talk to April herself about what happened next. So she arranged a visit.
Colloff: I went to McLeod, Oklahoma, tiny, tiny, little town, and went to Mabel Bassett Correctional Center, which is a very imposing building, sort of in the middle of farmland. And I was given not long.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Colloff: So I’m gonna turn this on …
Colloff: You know, how do you ask someone about their story like that in an hour?
INTERVIEW TAPE, April Wilkens: This has been a roller coaster.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Colloff: Mm-hmm.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: It has been a — such a roller coaster. So …
Lussenhop: April told Pam how ground down she’d become in the months leading up to the murder.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: There were times, as I became broken and lost my, like, every ounce of self-worth, you start to, it starts to, you know, you even start to question yourself afterwards. I did.
Lussenhop: By the time Pam met April, her niece Amanda had been researching and begging for someone to look into the case for almost 10 years.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: And so my niece and what she did and how she set that up, and she stayed with it. And that’s a testament to love and the power of what one human being can do.
Lussenhop: Her niece Amanda eventually reached two lawyers who advocated for criminal justice reform in Oklahoma. And they said yes, we want to help April. But they had something bigger in mind: using April’s case as a way to illustrate the need for a new law. A law that would allow abuse victims to apply for resentencing.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: I was like, “yes, yes, yes.” I think that was my answer. “Yes, yes, yes.” Right. “Thank you, Jesus. Yes, yes, yes.”
Lussenhop: The lawyers knew there were more women like April in prison. In addition to having one of the highest rates of female imprisonment in the country, Oklahoma also has one of the highest rates of domestic violence. The lawyers wanted to find more people who the law could apply to. They asked April if she had any ideas.
Colloff: April sort of thought about this and decided that maybe a way to figure out the answer to that question was to do her own survey of the women she was incarcerated with.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: I said, you know, there’s, like, over 1,200 women here. And so we just need to let them tell us ourselves. So, put the little survey together. Let people tell it in their own words, and said, OK, “if you are in here and you experienced domestic violence” …
Colloff: Obviously, abuse is a fairly common, sadly, thing for people to have experienced who are incarcerated. And what she was trying to figure out is, of those women, how many of them had crimes that stemmed from their abuse, like hers. And so she had a friend within the prison who had access to a, a printer and ran a couple hundred copies of this questionnaire off for her, and she and friends of hers passed it out and asked women to please fill it out if they had a story to tell.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: There’s so many times we have been shamed into silence. I have had to really encourage the ladies not to be silent.
Colloff: Prison is a place where you’re shielding yourself. You’re not exactly trying to be vulnerable all the time. You know, she’s a lifer. She’s older, she’s respected, she has a certain charisma, so she was the right person to ask people to tell those stories.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: Silence perpetuates abuse. It perpetuates injustice. So if we remain silent, then there will be no change.
Lussenhop: How many responses did she get?
Colloff: One hundred fifty-six women responded to the questionnaires.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: I knew I had a lot of company, but I didn’t know it was that much company.
Lussenhop: Pam read through some of them, with the names redacted.
Colloff: The one that stood out to me the most, and I thought about it for a long time afterward. This woman describes some pretty terrible abuse that she had been through, and then she wrote, “but I am FREE,” all capital letters, “now.” And I just thought, that you might prefer prison to escape abuse, I think speaks volumes about what these women’s experiences are like.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: I know these women.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Colloff: Yeah.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: And I care about these women.
Colloff: April got to know those women pretty well. And these are people of very, very different backgrounds, and they found this kind of common ground, where things weren’t quite as lonely as they had been.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: So we are survivor sisters. We are a support system.
Lussenhop: The lawyers who had taken on April’s case agreed to represent other women in the sisterhood, too. By this point, the proposed law had a name: the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act, which would give a judge the power to determine whether or not abuse had been a substantial contributing factor to the crime. And if the women could prove that, they’d be eligible for resentencing. April and the lawyers started a media campaign to try to build support for the bill.
TELEVISION INTERVIEW, Wilkens: I didn’t wanna hurt him. I didn’t wanna take his life. I just wanted to be safe.
Colloff: April was really at the forefront of that. So she would do newspaper and local television interviews.
TELEVISION INTERVIEW, Wilkens: I would never, ever, ever, ever take my freedom for granted again, so …
Lussenhop: Amanda, April’s niece, started lobbying too.
REPORTING CALL, Ross: We had advocacy days up there, and so we would go and we’d talk to legislators, like go to each office, learning about the legislative process. It’s so complicated.
Lussenhop: Prosecutors expressed concern and opposition. But a coalition of both Democrat and Republican lawmakers were able to push the bill forward. In 2024, it came up for a vote in the Legislature.
Colloff: April was allowed to go to Mabel Bassett’s law library and listen to the vote.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: So yes, so watched it live. And when I heard the roar come up from the gallery, like you could see the vote coming, right, you know, like when I heard their roar come up for the gallery, then we had our own roar there. It was just a few of us. It was count time. We were just like: “Wow! It passed.”
Colloff: And that was a really, really, really exciting moment.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: Oh my gosh. It was amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Colloff: And she then announced that, you know, to everyone in her area where she was housed in the prison.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: So I was able to run out there and tell them, and they were able to run and spread it through the compound, and you could just hear the roars and everybody’s so excited. Like, whoa. Oh my gosh. It was just …
Lussenhop: After some revisions to the bill, the governor signed it.
Colloff: I really don’t think anyone thought, “Yeah, we’re gonna, in just a couple years, change state law and pass the most progressive law in the nation like this.” But that’s what happened.
Lussenhop: And then, do they allow themselves to then think, “We, we might get to go home?”
Colloff: I think everyone was very excited about the law getting passed. But my sense from talking to people was that no one really knew what was gonna happen.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: Then people are like: “OK, this is real. Is it gonna apply to me? Can I do it?”
Colloff: And then, when these women started filing their resentencing petitions, you know, everyone knew each other’s court dates. They knew who was going first and who was going after who. And they would compare notes.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: And so, uh, so we were all excited, it was just, you know, we’re survivor sisters, sister survivors.
Colloff: So there was a lot of goodwill heading into Lisa Moss’ hearing in January of 2025.
Lussenhop: The survivor sisters started having hearings scheduled, and the first one to go was a woman named Lisa Moss. She was serving a life sentence for the murder of her husband — who she said had beaten and raped her throughout their marriage. Her case was a bit unusual. Even though she was convicted of first-degree murder, she hadn’t actually been present the night her husband was killed. Lisa’s older brother shot him. But during the trial, prosecutors argued successfully that she had helped orchestrate the killing.
Under the new survivors law, a judge was able to review her case and decide whether the violence and abuse had been a “substantial contributing factor” to the crime. At her hearing, Lisa got up on the stand and told the story of her marriage. About getting slammed against a refrigerator and raped with a curling iron. And about her growing fear that her husband was molesting her 4-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.
Afterwards, the judge decided, yes, the abuse had contributed to the crime. He determined that her life sentence was too harsh, and he reduced it. After more than 30 years behind bars, Lisa was allowed to walk out of prison that very day.
Colloff: April got news of this, and she, she sort of, like, leapt off of her bed and ran to go tell some of the other women who were in her housing unit, “Lisa’s going home.” And then everyone started screaming and crying, and I think that moment was so meaningful to so many people that Lisa had been believed, that Lisa was gonna get to see her kids, her grandkids. And when April returned, there was a message from her lawyer that said, “You’re next.” And the way that April described that was she said, “Our Exodus had begun.”
Lussenhop: In some ways, this all happened really quickly. The survivors’ act had gone from an idea to a law to someone getting released from prison in just three years. But some people were also pushing back. That included the Tulsa County district attorney.
TELEVISION INTERVIEW, Steve Kunzweiler: We literally are going to be opening up Pandora’s box for any person who in their past can say, at some point, they were the victim of some type of domestic violence.
Lussenhop: In an interview with a local TV station, he questioned whether the law might be a slippery slope.
TELEVISION INTERVIEW, Kunzweiler: I’m not opposed, or want to see anybody be the victim of domestic violence, but there’s plenty of characters out there that will take advantage of what this idea is.
Lussenhop: Pam talked to him, his name is Steve Kunzweiler.
REPORTING CALL, Kunzweiler: I always am supportive of the process. Um, I’m very much a constitutional person.
Lussenhop: He said he had to balance the needs of the women in prison with the needs of the murder victims’ families.
REPORTING CALL, Kunzweiler: And so, you know, I, I can’t, you know, I’m, in many respects, I’m speaking for victims who don’t have a voice anymore. Like in each one of these cases that you mentioned, those victims are dead and passed away and their family members don’t get to celebrate birthdays and holidays with their loved one because their lives were wrongfully terminated by individuals.
Colloff: You know prosecutors make sure that justice is served.
REPORTING CALL, Kunzweiler: I represent the state and, and in most respects, the victims in these murder cases, these are all defendants who were found guilty of murder, uh, by 12 men and women, uh, beyond a reasonable doubt and were sentenced accordingly.
REPORTING CALL, Colloff: Right.
REPORTING CALL, Kunzweiler: Unanimously.
Colloff: I think the idea of going back and second-guessing some of that is what bothers prosecutors.
REPORTING CALL, Kunzweiler: So, Ms. Wilkens had the right to appeal and she did and, uh, the Court of Criminal Appeals denied her appeal. She’s under a life sentence until the pardon and parole board determines otherwise.
Lussenhop: According to prosecutors like Steve Kunzweiler, the problem with this law went far beyond April and the other women hoping for lower sentences. Because if we started to take defendants’ abuse histories into account during their sentencing … well, where would you stop?
Colloff: And I think those questions are part of what made prosecutors so nervous about this legislation, because it is a sort of Pandora’s box, right? Like, if you acknowledge that these women have committed these crimes in part because of the abuse that they went through, what about other people? What about people who have been abused in their childhoods or have gone through all sorts of difficult things? Is that something that we should also factor in, into these decisions? And when you look at how high the rates are of abuse of incarcerated populations, it raises a lot of larger questions.
Lussenhop: That Pandora’s box prosecutors were afraid of … Oklahoma was about to open it. That’s after the break.
Lussenhop: After Lisa Moss was released in January of 2025, other women who had applied for resentencing got hearing dates. Because their cases took place in different counties from Lisa’s case, they would all be heard by different judges. April’s court date was months away, but in the meantime, Pam started attending hearings for the other women.
Colloff: The thought had been that it was important for each survivor at the resentencing hearing to do what Lisa had done, which was to get up on the stand and to tell the story of their abuse.
Lussenhop: On the witness stand, the women would tell their stories, sometimes really harrowing accounts of their abuse, in response to questions from their own lawyers. Pretty friendly, sympathetic questions designed to get them to explain what they’d gone through. But then, the prosecutors had the chance to cross-examine them, and those questions were very different.
Colloff: The one that struck me the most was a hearing that happened over the summer of Tyesha Long, who’s the youngest member of the survivor sisterhood. The prosecutor would say, and I’m paraphrasing here, but would say something to the effect of, today you said you were strangled to the point of unconsciousness twice. But at your trial you said it was once. Which is it? Was the sex that you had, you know, you said it was not consensual. Is that accurate? You know, we have a lot of text messages between you all. She started off very, very confident and relatively calm, you know, given the circumstances. But as things wore on, she was on the stand for over five hours.
Lussenhop: Wow.
Colloff: She started giving these like monosyllabic answers. It was like she was sort of like folding into herself and literally getting smaller under this questioning. You know, the courts want people in all cases to have a very linear explanation of what happened, A to B to C, on the night of the crime. And from everything we know about trauma and what trauma research has told us, when you are a victim of sustained abuse, that affects your recall, that affects the way that you remember the abuse. But I was struck by the hostile tone, and April talked to me about this afterward, because of course she was getting news of how these hearings were going.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: And I will tell you that it reminded me of how my ex talked to me. So then you, that brings that up, too.
Colloff: And she had testified at her own trial, and she said that for her, one of the things that was difficult, was that, that sort of scolding tone, that disbelief was not that different than what a survivor remembers from the way that an abuser spoke to them.
Lussenhop: After these hearings over the summer, the judges didn’t immediately issue rulings like the judge in Lisa’s case. And the months slowly went by. Finally, April’s hearing day arrived. The courtroom was packed. Amanda, April’s niece, was there. Lisa Moss, the first person released under the law, was also there. The state would be represented by Steve Kunzweiler, the DA himself, who’d also opposed April’s attempts for parole. In his opening remarks, he told the courtroom, quote, “She sits here as a convicted murderer.”
Colloff: So, the state hired its own expert, and that expert said that he did not believe the abuse had been a contributing factor, and that what had been a contributing factor was both her drug use at the time and her mental health. And a really painful determination was made by both April and her lawyers that she would not take the stand. I think everyone could see the way that was gonna go. It was gonna be a grueling experience. And what would it accomplish really?
Lussenhop: And so, April did not take the stand. Throughout the hearing, she sat silently next to her lawyer at the defense table.
Colloff: So, after everything had concluded, the judge said that he was ready to make a ruling, and that he would not be agreeing to resentencing, and that he did not feel that the defense had met their burden of proof in showing that the abuse that April went through was a, quote-unquote, “substantial contributing factor” to the crime.
Lussenhop: And as he’s explaining his decision, are you watching April? What was her reaction?
Colloff: April was very stoic at the time. It was very emotional, obviously, but she kept it together. The emotion I remember the most was in the gallery among the people who’d come to watch. She had a lot of family members who were there, Lisa Moss was there, and it was absolutely devastating for the people who were there. And I met with Lisa the following morning for coffee. And she just was so shocked and sad. She said to me: “I don’t understand how I’m out here, and April has to go back to prison. I just don’t understand.” And I think one of the things that was so hard for both of them was April was always supposed to be the one who led the way. She filed her petition on the very first day that this law was enacted. She had literally been there since the beginning with this questionnaire and with her advocacy from within the prison.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: Like, there was, it was bittersweet.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Colloff: Yeah.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: So exciting with Lisa and, and getting to talk to her grandkids, and then it, but then, you know, at the same time you’re like, yeah, I wanna be free too. And I wanna, I wanna hug my granddaughter and I wanna, you know, like, don’t we all, you can’t help but not feel that.
Lussenhop: After April’s denial, the judge followed up with decisions on other women who had hearings. One by one, they were all denied. To date, Lisa Moss is the only person to be released under the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act.
Colloff: Lisa was the only person of that group who wasn’t present at the time of the killing. She did not commit the act herself, and she was not there. And I think that has to be a piece of this. I think another thing I was really struck by is that so much of this is really about the discretion of prosecutors. So in, in Lisa’s case, it was not the super aggressive type of cross-examination that I saw in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, and in these other cases, so I think we can see that depending on what prosecutors think the outcome should be, that often is what happens here. April liked to quote the scholarship of a law professor who’s written a lot about this, about how the legal system is always looking for the perfect victim.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: So, I’m not a perfect human being. I don’t know any perfect victims.
Colloff: And how none of them really were the perfect victims and things that count against you. You know, just the idea of a woman committing that kind of violence, right? That makes you an imperfect victim. And there are other things, race, class, education, sexual history, drug use … none of them were perfect victims. And that was a mark against them.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: It’s just important for people to understand that we’re human.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Colloff: Mm-hmm.
INTERVIEW TAPE, Wilkens: And that we are dealing, when you talk about survivors who have survived horrific acts of domestic violence, what does it say about a society that treats some of its most victimized or vulnerable human beings, you know, with so little mercy, so little compassion?
Colloff: So, if we want to address mass incarceration, and that’s one of the reasons why Oklahoma has instituted some reforms, is because it has this overflowing prison population, then if we stop at nonviolent crimes, it still doesn’t make enough of a difference to really address the numbers we’re talking about. We have to wrestle with these harder cases, right? And I think it’s really important just to stop for a moment and think about the murdered, the victims themselves and the victims’ families, and what is best for them and what they want. And this is really complicated. Those things don’t always align. And at the same time, we have to reckon with some of the people who are in prison who’ve committed violent crimes, if we wanna reduce mass incarceration. So where do we begin? And a lot of that is beginning with, for example, victims of abuse. But none of these cases are easy. If someone has been handed a life sentence and there’s not a question about guilt or innocence, something really terrible happened. But we do have to at least think about it if we want to address the enormous prison population we currently have.
Lussenhop: April is still appealing her case. Lisa Moss, the only person to be released under the act, now goes by her maiden name, Lisa Wright, and she works as an advocate for incarcerated survivors. And Amanda, April’s niece, continues to advocate for her aunt’s release.
This episode was produced by Katherine Wells and Sabby Robinson. It was edited by Julia Longoria. David Herman mixed and sound designed the episode. Music by Julian Sartorius, Filippo Ansaldi and Simone Sims Longo, with additional music from Epidemic Sound. Our team also includes Gabrielle Berbey and Emma Talkoff. Pam Colloff continues to report on miscarriages of justice, and her new book is coming out next month. It’s called “Catch the Devil,” and it’s the story of a con man who helped send an innocent man to death row. We’ll see you in two weeks for a brand new episode of “Paper Trail.”
