A domestic abuse survivor serving life in prison may be one step closer to going home.
Colleen McCarty, executive director of the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, is an attorney representing April Wilkens.
McCarty filed a request for retroactive sentence relief on Thursday at the Tulsa County Courthouse on behalf of Wilkens. It’s the first domino to fall in the state’s recently passed Survivors’ Act aimed at shortening sentences for domestic violence victims.
Wilkens testified in 1998 that she was raped, threatened with a gun and handcuffed the night that she shot ex-fiancé Terry Carlton.
McCarty says there are many more survivors that this legislation could help.
“We’ve been estimating around 100 to 150, based on our experiences of hearing from people that may be willing to qualify for relief. That doesn’t mean they’ll all get to go home right away, but it does mean that they would get reduced sentences.”
Previously, people arrested for a crime couldn’t so easily use the fact that they suffered from domestic abuse as a part of their defense in court. The new legislation allows nuance in sentencing if a person was abused.
The next step in Wilkens’ case will be to wait for a judge to review the filing.
