The Michigan Women’s Justice and Clemency Project announced this month it was filing petitions for clemency with Gov. Rick Snyder for 10 women who were convicted of first- or second-degree murder and have been behind bars for years and, in some cases, decades, L.L. Brasier reports in the Free Press.
“These women are not a threat to anybody,” said project director Carol Jacobsen, a University of Michigan professor in women’s studies. “The whole social understanding of battery and abuse has changed since the 1980s and 1990s, when many of these women were convicted. In many of these cases, the abuse was never raised at trial.”
The most notable case involves Nancy Seaman, the elementary school teacher who made national news in 2004 when she used a hatchet to kill husband Robert Seaman in garage of the family’s home.
All of the women in the filings have sought clemency before, and all have been denied. Snyder’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment, Brasier writes.
