For Abuse Survivors, a New Path to Release from New Jersey Prisons

Governor Phil Murphy commuted the sentences of three women convicted for killing abusers. Now advocates also want a legislative fix, and point to reforms in New York and Oklahoma.

Lauren Gill   |    February 5, 2025

Governor Phil Murphy is here signing clemency orders, the first of his governorship, in December 2024. (Photo from New Jersey Governor/Facebook)

In 1999, Dawn Jackson took a plea deal and was sentenced to 30 years in a New Jersey prison for killing her step-grandfather, Robert McBride. As told in the New York Times Metro section that summer, Jackson, then 27, stabbed him in the chest and stole money to buy cocaine.

But over the next 25 years, Jackson told her side of the story, which was not as clear-cut as it once had seemed. In court documents she filed challenging her conviction, she recounted that McBride had raped her multiple times since she was a child, abuse that she also suffered at the hands of several other male family members starting when she was five. On the night she killed McBride, Jackson went to his house to collect money that she said he promised her. But when she asked her step-grandfather for the money, McBride tried to kiss her and told her that he wanted to have sex with her. Jackson resisted but McBride kept forcing himself upon her, and Jackson stabbed him.

Jackson never got a chance to recount the abuse to a jury because her public defender urged her to accept the plea deal, telling her that she would lose a trial and be sentenced to life or receive the death penalty. Later, Jackson asked the courts to reconsider her case but was unsuccessful; no judge would give weight to the years of abuse that had preceded the crime.

Making it even more challenging to prevail in the courts, New Jersey has no legal mechanism for judges to specifically consider whether a defendant suffered abuse and the role that this may have played in their case; it also has no process for incarcerated survivors to ask courts to review their case and reconsider their sentences in light of a history of prior abuse.

That left just one way for Jackson to win her freedom: receiving clemency from the governor. 

Hoping to draw attention to her cause, Jackson wrote letters to Kim Kardashian explaining her situation. Kardashian eventually sent her lawyers to New Jersey to meet with Jackson and featured the case on her television series “The Justice Project.” Jackson also worked with advocates who helped her apply for clemency.  

On Dec. 13, Jackson was called into a prison administrator’s office and told to sit in front of a computer loaded with a Zoom call. Governor Phil Murphy’s face popped onto the screen. He told her that he was commuting her sentence and she would be released before Christmas. 

“I just broke down crying,” Jackson told Bolts. “I couldn’t believe it happened.”

Jackson was one of three women who received commutations from Murphy in late 2024. The governor’s move came as part of a clemency program he launched last summer, inviting applications from people who fell into specific categories that he felt needed additional review. All three women—Jackson, Denise Staples, and Myrna Diaz—applied under the same category: They were survivors who were either coerced by or committed a crime against their abuser.

Many other women who faced similar circumstances remain imprisoned in New Jersey. Seventy-two percent of first-time offenders imprisoned for a violent crime at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, the state’s women’s prison, were abused by their victim, according to a 2023 report from the New Jersey Criminal Sentencing and Disposition Commission. 

Jackson said her release was bittersweet knowing that she left women who went through similar traumas behind. “Women in my shoes, there are a lot of us,” she said. “We all share the same story, just different characters.” 

Advocates for criminal justice reform are cheering Murphy’s use of clemency, a tool he’d never used since coming into office seven years ago but that he is now promising to wield more often before he finishes his final term and leaves office at the end of this year. But they also say that clemency is just a short-term solution that doesn’t account for glaring gaps in how the state’s criminal legal system treats abuse survivors.

The ACLU of New Jersey, along with other advocacy groups, are calling on legislators to create lasting protections that would provide relief to more men and women who have suffered abuse, and drafting a bill that they hope their legislative allies will introduce this session. It would require judges to consider if someone has been abused prior to sentencing and create a process through which survivors who are already incarcerated can petition for a reduced sentence. 

Their proposal is inspired by legislation in New York and Oklahoma, passed in 2019 and 2024 respectively, that provide similar protections. 

“Without any legislation, there isn’t an avenue for their lived experiences in court,” Rebecca Uwakwe, director of The Clemency Project, a program that assists prisoners with petitions, at the ACLU of New Jersey, told Bolts. “We really want to ensure that there is a lasting impact and that survivors will have the relief that they need beyond the clemency project.” 

Dawn Jackson, second from the left, is here pictured with family members after her release in December. (Photo courtesy Dawn Jackson).

Currently, when New Jersey judges make a sentencing decision, they may consider 14 mitigating factors, some of which could provide context as to why a person committed a crime, such as their youth. None of those factors specifically take into account whether a person suffered sexual, physical, or psychological abuse. 

Policymakers were made aware of these shortcomings two years ago. In March 2023, the New Jersey Criminal Sentencing and Disposition Commission, a legislative body charged with assessing how to improve sentencing guidelines,. recommended that the legislature add prior abuse by a victim as a mitigating factor. It concluded that the existing factors broad enough to apply to situations of prior abuse, such as the mention of reasons that may “excuse or justify” the crime, are insufficient.

“There is extensive research focused on the impact of abuse on character and conduct,” read the commission’s report. “We now understand that abused individuals tend to experience a variety of negative health outcomes, such as depression, suicide ideation, post-traumatic stress, alcohol or drug abuse, and even violent behavior.”

The legislature, however, never adopted the recommendation. Jessica Kitson, director of legal advocacy for Volunteer Lawyers for Justice, a legal advocacy organization that is involved in drafting the upcoming legislation, told Bolts that the snub from lawmakers ignores the lasting trauma that abuse survivors face.

“The idea that you’re going to take someone who has been victimized in that way over a significant period of time and not take that into account when looking at a crime that they have been accused of or convicted of and now being sentenced for, is preposterous,” she said.

Kitson said the New York and Oklahoma reforms, which both received bipartisan support, provide a model for New Jersey’s treatment of survivors. New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, which overwhelmingly passed the Democratic-run legislature, and the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act, which the Republican-run legislature pushed through over their governor’s initial objections, are similar; both create a way for  consideration of domestic abuse at trial and a pathway for resentencing. 

As of 2023, the most recent year with available data, 40 people had been resentenced under New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act. Twenty-eight are people of color, which is in keeping with data showing that people of color are more likely to be prosecuted for fighting back against their abuser. Just one person has been resentenced in Oklahoma since the state enacted the Survivors’ Act last year. Eight petitions are still pending, Oklahoma Appleseed, an advocacy organization that has been leading resentencing efforts, told Bolts.  

Without legislation in New Jersey, survivors will have to continue to rely on clemency, an award that’s been given sparingly in recent years. Jackson first applied in 2017, asking then-Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, to free her. Christie denied her application. Throughout his eight years in office, Christie commuted the sentences of just 3 people and pardoned 52 more, including several campaign donors or supporters.

Prior to December, when Murphy commuted three sentences and pardoned 33 people, he had not granted anyone clemency. In fact, he was the only governor since 2004 to not exercise that power a single time in his first term. But Murphy, a Democrat, announced a new clemency initiative in June of 2024, vowing to “help address inequities and unfairness in our system of justice.”

Besides people who committed their crimes against their abuser, Murphy’s initiative carved out expedited review for several other categories: It included people who received an excessive sentence because they rejected a plea deal and chose to go to trial, people who were convicted of crimes that aren’t illegal anymore such as marijuana-related offenses, and people who would have received a lesser sentence under today’s sentencing guidelines. Murphy’s program did not review anyone’s case automatically even if they fell under these categories, instead requiring people to send in an application to the state.

Murphy put together a six-member advisory board, including several lawyers and professors, and a deputy solicitor general, to review applications and make clemency recommendations. He then issued his first acts of clemency in mid-December, pardoning 33 people on top of commuting Jackson, Staples, and Diaz’s three sentences.

But more than 1,000 applications are still pending, according to Tyler Jones, a spokesperson for Murphy. Only a “very small percentage” are from abuse survivors, Jones told Bolts in an email.  

Uwakwe of the ACLU said just six of the applications submitted by the ACLU of New Jersey so far are from survivors. The other three are still pending. 

“Governor Murphy unequivocally believes in second chances for rehabilitated individuals. Understanding certain circumstances that victims of abuse face leading to their crimes and the unique situations of each case, the Governor and the Clemency Advisory Board take all factors into consideration when reviewing and approving these applications,” wrote Jones. 

Asked whether Murphy would support the upcoming legislative action, Jones wrote that the governor is “committed to supporting survivors of sexual and domestic violence in any way he can.”

Meanwhile, Jackson is soaking up her newfound freedom and spending time with her family. She hasn’t forgotten about the women who are still imprisoned, and has already attended a meeting with other formerly incarcerated women to discuss how to use their position to fight for reforms. 

“There’s a lot that needs to be said,” she told Bolts. “Look into these cases. Look into the history, look into the background, look into them, because that needs to be done. So many other women, along with men, have stories similar to mine that need to be looked into.”

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