Justice For Gaile Owens

I'm glad I didn't live in America in the 1980's because it seems that back then there was no such thing as justice, a mistake we run the risk of failing to learn from.

The picture is that of Gaile Owens, a woman that the state of Tennessee are getting ready to execute, after 25 years in prison. In the 80's while the rest of us were watching The A-Team and Knight Rider, this woman was being sexually and physically abused by her husband.

Eventually in a bid to protect her children she discussed a hit on her husband. This eventually led to a person killing her husband. She was arrested in 1985 and decided to plead guilty in a deal that would lead to her spending life in prison, something she did to protect her children from hearing the evidence of sexual and physical abuse she had suffered.

But after a series of legal blunders she ended up sentenced to death without ever being able to speak in her own defense, or have the jury know of the physical and sexual abuse.

Fast forward to A-Team The Movie and a failed attempt to rekindle Knight Rider (with a Mustang, seriously?), we have the present day. All her appeals have fallen on deaf ears. Despite the absurdity and horrific miscarriage of justice, no one in the legal / political system can be bothered to put a stop to a potential execution date that is looming. That's right, this battered woman is about to be killed (the first woman killed in Tennessee since the 1800's) by the state for asking someone to kill her abusive husband.

Never mind that she didn't pull the trigger. Never mind that she was trying to protect her children. Never mind that she has already spent 25 years in prison. Time to murder her? Are we really still no better than this?

I say that 25 years is enough. That's a stout sentence and far more than so many other criminals get; even the ones that actually kill people. David Phillips, just reported to jail for his role in killing a high school girl in a 2005 traffic accident, where he was racing on city streets with a youth in a Mustang. The 100 MPH crash left one 17-year-old girl dead and another severely burned. But David and the other driver got just 6 years in jail, which in the real world will probably be less than three years.

In the case of Gaile Owens, she was trying to get out of a horrific situation that was endangering her life and the lives of her children, and she actually serves 25 years, with the likelihood of execution hanging over her.

If you care about justice at all, please inform yourself further about this case, and let's see if we can get the politicians to listen for once, and reverse this horrible miscarriage of justice.

Visit her official supporters web site here, and learn how you can write the State Governor.