[Ppnews] Our Voices Within , SF, 3/28 - Article about survivor Connie Keel

[Political Prisoner News]

OUR VOICES WITHIN:  INTERNALLY FREE

Celebrating the freedom of formerly
incarcerated survivors of domestic
violence and honoring those
who remain imprisoned

Date: Saturday, March 28, 2009  - 3:30 p.m.- 6:00 p.m.
Location: Women's Building
3543 18th St., San Francisco
(Between Mission & Guerrero)

Silent Auction of artwork by survivors begins at 3:30 p.m.
Program begins promptly at 4:00 p.m.

Cost: $10-$25 at the door

No one turned away due to lack of funds! The Women's Building is 
wheelchair accessible.
Limited parking available in near-by parking lots or on the street.
BART users exit at 16th St.

Questions? Call Emily 415 255 7036 x304
www.freebatteredwomen.org

********************************************************
Below is an article about survivor Connie Keel, the Governor has 
until tomorrow to decide to release her.  If you  haven't already 
please send the Governor a fax urging him to release 
Connie! 
<http://www.freebatteredwomen.org/Alert_Connie.html>http://www.freebatteredwomen.org/Alert_Connie.html

Emily



Abused woman smells freedom after 29 years

<mailto:begelko at sfchronicle.com>Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Connie Keel has spent 29 of her 50 years in prison for a murder that 
her husband committed in Campbell while she sat in a car outside - 
terrified, she said, that he would kill her if she fled.

<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2009/03/26/BAGU16MSLH.DTL&o=0>
[]


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Now the state parole board has approved her release, and thousands of 
her supporters have asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to let her go.

"Ms. Keel was a battered, abused woman at the time of the murder," 
said Adam Reich, a University of Southern California law student who 
is representing her and has organized an Internet support campaign.

"I'm not discounting her part in the crime," Reich said. "But enough 
is enough."

Schwarzenegger has until Friday to decide whether to overturn the 
Board of Parole Hearings' decision in October that Keel is suitable 
for release.

The odds are against Keel. Since Schwarzenegger took office in 2003, 
the parole board, whose members he appoints, has voted to release 891 
convicted murderers, and he has vetoed 640.

A 1988 state ballot measure authorized governors to block the release 
of inmates serving life in prison with the possibility of parole. 
Former Gov. Gray Davis vetoed all but a handful of paroles approved 
by the board, which in recent decades has denied prisoner releases 
more than 98 percent of the time.

The prospects of release are higher, however, for women who can show 
that they committed their crimes at least partly because partners 
were abusing them. Schwarzenegger, like Davis, has been more willing 
to approve parole in those cases, although no statistics are available.

Battered-woman syndrome was recognized by the California Supreme 
Court in a 1992 ruling requiring trial judges to allow psychiatric 
testimony about the effects of domestic violence on its victims.

State law also allows prisoners who were convicted before 1992 to 
seek a new trial if they can show that they might have won acquittal 
had experts been allowed to testify about their abuse. Reich said 
he's working on such an appeal in case Schwarzenegger denies parole to Keel.

In the meantime, he said, 5,000 people from 49 states and 42 nations 
have signed petitions supporting Keel's release. She is being held at 
the California Institution for Women in Chino (San Bernardino County).

Keel was 21 and living in Santa Clara County when she went for a 
drive with her husband, Ricky Keel, and his cousin Jeffrey Taylor one 
evening in 1980. Reich said Ricky Keel stopped at a liquor store in 
Campbell to buy cigarettes and suddenly started talking with Taylor 
about whether they should rob and shoot the clerk.

When his wife objected, Reich said, Keel pointed a loaded gun at her 
and told her to shut up and stay in the car. Keel and Taylor then 
robbed the store and fatally shot the owner, Frank Gummer, 41.
A jury convicted Connie Keel of first-degree murder, with a sentence 
of 25 years to life. Her husband and Taylor got similar sentences and 
are still in prison.

In arguing for her release, her legal team told the parole board that 
Keel was unable to disobey her husband that night because of her long 
history of abuse - beatings by her mother, sexual abuse by three of 
her uncles and beatings and rapes by her husband.

The board had denied release since Keel first became eligible in 
1996. Last year, for the first time, it looked into her claims of 
domestic violence, which were corroborated by relatives, friends and 
even her husband.

The board's investigators said the marriage was "marked with 
physical, psychological and sexual violence" that apparently "clouded 
(her) perceptions and influenced her actions" at the time of the crime.

Opposition came from the Santa Clara County district attorney's 
office, which prosecuted Keel. Deputy District Attorney Ronald Rico 
told the board that Keel had disciplinary problems in prison and 
still posed a risk of "reverting to the past behavior ... the 
dependency, the passive relationship, and the failure to abide by and 
conform to rules."

Reich said Keel has had a few minor disciplinary infractions but none 
for violence, and that the board's latest psychological evaluation 
concluded she posed the lowest possible risk of committing a crime if freed.

Reich, a second-year law student, said the case was one of several he 
was assigned last year in USC's Post-Conviction Justice Project.

"This is the reason every person who's associated with the law or 
goes to law school does so," Reich said. "You want to see justice done."

E-mail Bob Egelko at <mailto:begelko at sfchronicle.com>begelko at sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle



Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
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