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Four innocent people. Four life sentences. Four incredible and traumatic stories.

5 September 2017

Step inside the minds of four people who, collectively, spent 73 years behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit. These are the stories of their traumatic life journeys on release from prison.

Paddy Hill

From: Belfast | Sentence: Life | Served: 16 years | Released: 1991

Paddy’s story

Paddy Hill was one of the Birmingham Six, sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly planting a series of bombs in pubs around Birmingham in 1974, killing 21 and injuring 182.

After serving 16 years his conviction was quashed by the UK Court of Appeal. He received compensation but quickly spent it trying to buy back the love of the family he had lost during his years inside.

Every day he has to fight for the psychological help he so desperately needs, maintaining that he has been dehumanised.

Driven by his intense desire to highlight and reduce instances of injustice and to offer the advice that exonerees need, he set up the ‘Miscarriages of Justice Organisation’ (MOJO).

Sunny Jacobs

From: USA | Sentence: Death | Served: 17 years | Released: 1992

“I thought if I took one step away from that door that they’d have some marksman shoot me”

How would you celebrate your release after being wrongfully incarcerated for 17 years?

Sunny’s story

Sunny was sentenced to death, along with her then husband, for the murder of two police officers in Florida in 1976. While imprisoned, her husband was executed via electric chair and her two young children were cast into foster care.

Nearly 17 years after her arrest, her conviction was overturned on appeal.

She never received any compensation and, having remarried to Peter Pringle, set up the Sunny Center with him to help other exonerees transition back into life upon release.

Both Sunny and Peter also became advocates for human rights, campaigning worldwide against the death penalty.

Peter Pringle

From: Dublin | Sentence: Life | Served: 15 years | Released:1995

“I had the three blackest weeks of my life”

How Peter Pringle grieved for the life he should have had before it was stolen from him.

Peter’s story

Peter was one of the last men to be sentenced to hanging in Ireland, convicted of murdering two Gardaí in 1980. His death sentence was commuted to 40 years in prison.

During his prison stay, he discovered evidence of a blood sample of his that had not been examined in his trial.

In 1995 he succeeded in an appeal against his conviction and since then met and married Sunny Jacobs, whom he lives with in the west of Ireland.

Robert Brown

From: Glasgow | Sentence: Life | Served: 25 years | Released: 2002

“A constant kaleidoscope of thoughts, a treadmill that never stops, it’s a prison cell in my home”

Robert Brown hasn’t slept in a bed in 6 months as he needs cell like conditions to sleep.

Robert’s story

Robert Brown, barely out of his teens, was sentenced for murder in 1977 — the victim of falsified police confessions.

He was released 25 years later after it was determined his verdict could not be considered safe.

He was released just in time to watch his mother die and spent the years since retreating from a world he doesn’t understand and feels doesn’t understand him.

He became consumed by his profound need for an apology from the state and to see the corrupt police who brutalised him brought to justice.

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