Who was Sunny Jacobs - the death row survivor who died in Galway house fire? — Transcript

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1. 0:00I was at the wrong place at the wrong
2. 0:02time with the wrong people. In 1976,
3. 0:06Sonia Sunny Jacobs was 28. The
4. 0:09self-proclaimed young hippie was
5. 0:11traveling with her boyfriend Jesse
6. 0:12Defero in a green Chevrolet Camaro
7. 0:15driven by a friend of Defa's, Walter
8. 0:17Roads. The car was stopped on Interstate
9. 0:2095 by Florida Highway Patrol trooper
10. 0:23Philip Black. With Trooper Black was
11. 0:25Donald Irwin, a visiting Canadian
12. 0:27constable. When Black called in the
13. 0:30stop, he was told over the radio that
14. 0:32roads had criminal convictions and in an
15. 0:34instant, gunfire broke out. Both Trooper
16. 0:37Black and Constable Irwin were killed
17. 0:39and the group made a getaway in Black's
18. 0:42stolen police car driven by
19. 0:44roads. A little later, another car was
20. 0:47stolen and its owner taken hostage
21. 0:49before that car crashed trying to avoid
22. 0:51a police checkpoint.
23. 0:53Sunny Jacobs, Defero, and Roads were all
24. 0:56arrested and charged with the murder of
25. 0:58the two policemen. Sunny and Defero
26. 1:00claimed that Roads had done the shooting
27. 1:02and that they had no choice but to flee
28. 1:04with him. Two eyewitnesses backed up
29. 1:07this version of events, as did the
30. 1:09physical evidence that found gunshot
31. 1:12residue on Roads hands and to Pharaohs,
32. 1:14who claimed Roads handed him the gun
33. 1:16while driving. Walter Rhodess, however,
34. 1:18turned witness on the promise of a
35. 1:20lesser charge and testified against
36. 1:23Defro and Jacobs. Roads was given a life
37. 1:26sentence, but to Pharaoh and Jacobs were
38. 1:29sentenced to
39. 1:30death. In Jacob's case, the jury had
40. 1:33recommended life in prison, but the
41. 1:35judge, Daniel Maximum Dan Fulch,
42. 1:38sentenced her to death nonetheless.
43. 1:40Sunonny Jacobs spent 5 years in solitary
44. 1:43confinement. After a series of appeals
45. 1:45around a failed polygraph by roads and
46. 1:47reports he had confessed to a prison
47. 1:49guards, Jacobs had her sentence commuted
48. 1:51to life in prison in
49. 1:531981. In 1986, a jailhouse informant,
50. 1:58Brenda Isam, who had told the original
51. 2:00trial that Jacobs had confessed to her,
52. 2:02admitted she had lied under pressure
53. 2:04from the state attorney. On May 4th,
54. 2:071990, the Pharaoh was put to death in
55. 2:09the electric chair. His execution had to
56. 2:11be halted three times when his head
57. 2:13started to smoke. He was seen to be
58. 2:15breathing and moving during these
59. 2:17stoppages. At around the same time,
60. 2:19filmmaker Mickey Deoff, a childhood
61. 2:22friend of Jacobs, made contact with her
62. 2:24and started campaigning on her behalf.
63. 2:26Convinced of her innocence, Deoff's
64. 2:29attention and research led to the
65. 2:31Bowerard State Attorney offering to
66. 2:33release Jacobs if she pleaded to a
67. 2:35lesser charge while admitting no guilt.
68. 2:38Seen by many as a move to avoid an
69. 2:40embarrassing retrial, Jacobs accepted
70. 2:43the deal and was released from prison.
71. 2:45Deac's movie In the Blink of an Eye was
72. 2:48released by ABC networks in the United
73. 2:50States in 1996 as a movie of the week.
74. 2:53In 2000, after the botched execution of
75. 2:56Tedaro and others, Florida abandoned its
76. 2:58use of the electric chair for the more
77. 3:00humane lethal injection. Jacobs
78. 3:03campaigned against the death penalty
79. 3:04after a release and in 1998 she attended
80. 3:07an event in Gway with Amnesty
81. 3:09International where she met Peter
82. 3:11Pringle. Pringle himself had been
83. 3:13convicted and jailed for the murder of
84. 3:14two members of Angarda Shiaona after a
85. 3:17raid in Balahadrin in 1980. He served 15
86. 3:20years in prison before the courts
87. 3:22quashed his conviction. The pair married
88. 3:24in New York in 2012 and continued to
89. 3:27campaign together against capital
90. 3:29punishment and the death penalty. Ever
91. 3:31since I've been released, I've been
92. 3:33fighting against the death
93. 3:35penalty because uh in in general, I
94. 3:38believe it's wrong. But you can't undo
95. 3:41this. If you take someone's life, you
96. 3:44can't give it back or if you find out
97. 3:45there was a
98. 3:47mistake. And there's no compensation for
99. 3:50that.