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Sunny by name….

• Kim Lenaghan
• 15 Aug 07, 06:20 PM

Every now and again you turn on the radio and hear a story that makes you gasp with horror, moves you to tears one minute, has you laughing the next and ultimately leaves you feeling uplifted and inspired. That was certainly the case with my guest on This New Day last Sunday morning (12th).

Sunny Jacobs spent 17 years in a Florida prison, five of them on death row, and all because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. When she and her partner Jesse accepted a lift from a casual acquaintance with a shady and dangerous past she had no idea it would lead to a shootout during the road trip that would leave them wrongly accused of the double murder of two policemen.

The five years she spent on death row were in solitary confinement because she was the only woman in the state under threat of execution. Her cell was 6 paces long and if she reached out with her arms she could touch both walls. She was only allowed to leave it twice a week for a shower and 30 mins in the exercise yard - alone. Yet she survived, wrote her thoughts down in a journal and stayed mentally strong through a series of little tricks including her five minute rule – she would never allow herself to stay angry for one second longer than 5 minutes, as she said “it could have been my last day on this earth and I wasn’t going to waste it being mad at something or someone stupid.” She also never gave up hope, believing that if you really are innocent surely “the truth will set you free.” Her chief horror was that anyone could believe her capable of such a crime. “I was a vegetarian, I wouldn’t have killed a fly. How could they think I would kill a man!”

Sunny was finally exonerated in 1992 when the evidence that convicted her was discredited, but unfortunately that was too late for her partner Jesse. He had been executed two years earlier in the most horrific way when the electric chair malfunctioned and it took over 13 minutes for him to die. She had been separated from her 9 year old son and ten month old daughter after her arrest and, in another tragic twist of fate, her parents had been killed in a plane crash ten years earlier. Now, as a 45 year old woman she had lost her partner, her family, she had nowhere to go and all the contents of her life were contained in a cardboard box.

But Sunny Jacobs is a survivor, not a victim. She re-built her relationship with her children, got work as a yoga teacher, became passionately involved in campaigning against the death penalty and, against all the odds, has a story with a happy ending. On a trip to Dublin she met Peter Pringle, another exonerated death-row inmate, and the two now live happily together in the West of Ireland. He’s a giant of a man with a shock of white hair, while Sunny is a tiny slip of a woman, but they are clearly a perfect match in every way, very much in love and very contented. But that’s the most striking thing of all. Sunny Jacobs isn’t bitter. She doesn’t feel sorry for herself or wallow in the past. She is the most positive, optimistic person I have ever met. She describes herself as “lucky” and her life as “magical”, indeed she told me she thought she had the best life of anyone she knows.

I felt humbled in her presence and vowed never to grumble about the petty things in my life again. Naturally, being me, that lasted about four hours, but I will never forget Sunny, a woman so aptly named, and the effect meeting her had on me.

And I’m not alone. Many of you listening on Sunday morning have called to ask for details about her and her recently published book. Based on her prison letters and journals it’s called ‘Stolen Time’ by Sunny Jacobs and is published by Doubleday. And while you’re on the website you can also listen to that interview with Sunny again on ‘This New Day’.

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