Legal News

Early Release For Terminally Ill Murder Convict, Part II

By Ashby Jones

Strange, it seems, how some things come together some days. Earlier, we posted on Scotland’s decision to release from prison Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence agent who was convicted of murdering 259 people in the terrorist attack of Pan Am Flight 103. In the course of the post, we asked about the wisdom of cutting sentences for prisoners who are terminally ill.

Then, later in the day, lo and behold — as if we’d requested it — a reader alerted us to a situation out in California that dovetails nicely with the Lockerbie situation. A terminally ill convict, in jail since 1983 for conspiring to kill her boyfriend, it became clear on Thursday, will be freed from a California prison. Click here and here for stories from ABC News and the LA Times, respectively.

According to the ABC News report, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had until Friday to approve or deny Deborah Peagler’s release following the recommendation of a state parole board who last month ruled that Peagler, who is dying from cancer, be released. The governor instead chose not to review the board’s recommendation, meaning that the recommendation will stand.

But Peagler isn’t just being released on account of her terminal illness. Adding to ABC News, the rationale involves the circumstances under which she pleaded guilty to the murder of Oliver Wilson nearly thirty years ago.

Although Peagler pleaded guilty to murdering her boyfriend in 1983, her case became a cause celebre among domestic abuse advocates who say she was not allowed to present evidence in 1983 that she was tortured, raped and forced into prostitution by the boyfriend.

Advocates for battered women say Peagler was a victim of her times, forced to take a plea deal in an era when domestic abuse was not commonly understood as a reason for self-defense.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 20, 2009 (boomark / email).