It’s a dream she birthed as a girl combing her Barbie doll’s hair. “It’s something I’ve always wanted,” she says. “I couldn’t wait to get older to have someone to love me, someone I can love and call my own. That’s what motherhood is for me.”
That dream was suddenly shattered when Jacobs, at 16, was arrested and later convicted for a crime that she and others insist she did not commit: the 1992 shooting murder of a former elementary school classmate, 17-year-old Kevin Gaddy.
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Faye Jacobs.Courtesy Midwest Innocence Project
Her nightmare began on Feb. 9, 1992, when Jacobs was driving with her mother near 29th and Jefferson streets in Little Rock and they stopped to check out a commotion. On the spot an officer asked Jacobs her name, then handcuffed her and took her to the police station. A test for gun residue on her hands was negative. But nine days later she was charged with killing Gaddy, allegedly because she wanted his Chicago Bulls jacket.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Jacobs tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue.
Faye Jacobs, far right, hugs her sister Dottie Robinson after Faye’s July 2018 release from prison.Courtesy Midwest Innocence Project
She was found guilty and sentenced as a juvenile to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In 2014 her appeal for help caught the attention of the Midwest Innocence Project, which took up her case and gathered new evidence that undermined the conviction. “Her innocence was so clear,” says MIP’s executive director, Tricia Rojo Bushnell.
Before MIP could present its findings to a judge, however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sentencing of juveniles to life without parole was unconstitutional. The state of Arkansas was forced to reconsider Jacobs' sentence — and in cutting it down to 40 years, the prosecutor offered Jacobs a deal that would release her immediately with credit for the 26 years she’d already served.
Jacobs, now 46, took the deal and was set free in 2018. But as a former inmate who officially had completed her sentence, she surrendered her legal standing to go back to court while incarcerated and prove her innocence.
For more on Faye Jacobs' case and her determination to clear her name,subscribe now to PEOPLEor pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.
She had one clear path left: an appeal last year to Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson for a full pardon. When he turned down Jacobs' request in January without addressing her guilt or innocence, she was left in limbo, unable to ask again for at least another six years.
“I don’t know when or how it’s going to happen, but it’s going to happen,” says Jacobs. “I’m a true believer.”
source: people.com
