Domestic Abuse Survivor, Freed from Prison, Speaks Out

Jones, 53, spent the last 21 years at prisons in Frontera and Chowchilla, serving time for shooting and killing her abusive husband. Although she was acquitted and freed in June after a retrial – the first of its kind in the state – she can't get her other family out of her mind, or her life.

"I'm going to try to help them as much as possible," she said. "This is my family right here."

Jones is doing more than answering letters postmarked from California's state prison system. She's using her newfound freedom to speak out on behalf of women who are serving life sentences for crimes related to their abuse.

She is one of at least 15 featured speakers at "Voices From Within," a fund-raiser performance and art show in Oakland on Saturday, October 21, benefiting Free Battered Women, a non-profit that advocates for women like Jones.

The event is an opportunity for women to share their stories through artwork, poetry, music and dance, said Andrea Bible, Free Battered Women coordinator.

"It's really an opportunity for women who have been released from prison … to talk about their experience and feel embraced, after enduring both the violence of the relationship and the violence in prison," Bible said.

In 1985, Jones was charged with the shooting death of her husband, Frank Orange. The first murder trial ended in a hung jury. Jones later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 17 years to life in prison.

Under state law at the time, evidence of the Orange’s battering of Jones wasn’t admissible in court. Her lawyer couldn’t talk about the beatings that landed her in the hospital twice.

But a new law, passed in 1992 and made retroactive in 2002, allows expert testimony on intimate partner battering and its effects into court proceedings.

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