A 74 year old black woman in America has been released from jail after serving 32 years behind bars for a murder she didn't commit – thanks to a couple of law students from University of Southern California.
Mary Virginia Jones was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of a parole for murder, kidnapping and robbery in a fatal shooting which occurred in 1981, Los Angeles. But apparently, it was her then boyfriend, Mose Willis who was the actual criminal.
On this fateful day, it was Willis who actually kidnapped the two men. He then ordered Jones – at gunpoint – to drive a car to a back alley in Los Angeles, where he shot them in cold blood.
Jones' conviction was overturned this year when a group of law students at the University of Southern California's Post-Conviction Justice Project challenged her case, claiming she would not have been convicted if the jury had heard expert testimony about the impact of intimate partner battering, (formerly known as battered women's syndrome).
The Los Angeles District Attorney's recently reviewed the case again and agreed to set aside her convictions if she pleaded No-Contest to voluntary manslaughter. Jones told the judge,
"I did not willingly participate in this crime, but I believe entering a no contest plea is in my best interest."
She has been given credit for the time that she already served, and ordered released from prison amidst the elation of family and supporters. Her children say they're just looking forward to sitting down at the dinner table with their mother for the first time in more than three decades.
But we have to ask: If you were the one, What Would You Do?
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