We fight for the rights and opportunities of every Oklahoman.
women are going to prison simply for fighting back.
Criminalized Survivorship is a uniquely American phenomenon.
Where America's abysmal response to domestic violence and sexual assault meets its arbitrary and ancient self-defense law, there is a pit that traps female survivors.
Self defense law is largely driven by case law dating back to the seventeenth century, when men would gun each other down in duels, and people would routinely die in bar fights that went too far.
In order to prevail on a self-defense claim, you have to have been in imminent danger and reasonably fear for your life. Many women who suffer from chronic abuse are constantly afraid for their lives and struggle to leave for fear of retaliation and death. They are financially dependent on their abusers, and find little support from law enforcement who tell them to leave the premises if the lease is in the abuser's name.
Many women in Oklahoma prisons are simply there because they fought back when they realized that reinforcements weren't coming. They had been abandoned by the system and left to fight for themselves. However, when they cross the line from victim to defendant, the efficient wheels of criminal prosecution begin to turn.
Oklahoma Appleseed is building a coalition of criminalized survivors to fight for their lives. They deserve another chance at life after the system abandoned them.
Take the case of April Wilkens. April was systemically terrorized by her intimate partner for three years--he raped her, beat her, stalked her, broke the locks on her house so she could never feel safe, and bribed law enforcement to stay away when neighbors called police. Ultimately, April felt she had no other choice and turned to face her fate. She thought she could talk to her abuser and get him to stand down once and for all. Her abused held her over night, raped her, and threatened her life. In a final life and death struggle, April shot him eight times. She waited for the police to come and confessed everything, believing that finally the system would come to her aid. Instead she was sentenced to life by a jury in 1999 and has been serving time in Mabel Bassett Correctional Center ever since.
Oklahoma Appleseed will be raising awareness about April's case in hopes she will one day be set free. Come back for more information and advocacy opportunities surrounding her case.
What if there was no one you could call?
"The law of self-defense assumes a couple of things, it assumes that you are in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm. It assumes two people of equal size and strength. And it assumes that your actions are reasonable. And the problems, of course, for particularly women who fight back is that they’re often size and strength differentials, that they’re not fighting back right in that moment. It’s not the struggle over the gun, but it may be a little bit later, when there’s a clear break in the action when they have the ability to keep themselves safe in some way. And their actions may not look reasonable to others."
--Leigh Goodmark, Professor of Law at University of Maryland who’s represented many domestic violence survivors behind bars.