A woman who served 27 years of a life sentence for her husband's murder — despite not being present when he was killed — was among 87 people granted clemency by Gov. Pat Quinn on Friday.
Peggy Jo Jackson left the Logan Correctional Center on Friday and headed to South Carolina, where she'll live with her sister and mother and complete her parole, said Erica Nichols-Cook, an attorney with the Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois-Springfield.
She called Quinn's executive order "a victory for all innocent women that have suffered from serious domestic abuse."
Jackson, 57, was in shock when she got the news, Nichols-Cook said.
"I think she was just so overwhelmed," Nichols-Cook said. "She'd been waiting for this for a long time."
The Associated Press story was published on March 29, 2013.
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