At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 27 Carlisle residents and students of Dickinson College and Dickinson Law School gathered in ATS to hear Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs and Peter Pringle speak about their experiences as exonerated inmates sentenced to death, using themes of forgiveness and helping others. Jacobs and Pringle were invited to the campus by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and Penn State’s Dickinson Law School.

The event was divided into three sections. First, Pringle explained his personal history. In 1980, he was convicted of capital murder and robbery after a police officer claimed to have heard a confession from Pringle. Pringle was sentenced to 15 years in prison and death. During his years in prison, Pringle practiced yoga and meditation, but he also learned the law and helped other inmates with their cases. He prepared his case under the Irish Constitution and his conviction was overturned in 1995.

Pringle then helped Jacobs, who uses a wheelchair, to the podium. She explained how prior to her conviction she “used to be a daughter, a wife and a mother.” Her and her former husband, Jesse Tafero, were both convicted of capital murder and put on death row. Jacobs explained the way Tafero’s execution malfunctioned and Jacob’s former husband was set on fire. In the meantime, Jacobs was placed in solitary confinement for five years. She was allowed to take a fifteen-minute walk two days a week but was prohibited from having any human contact. Her sentence was then changed and she spent 12 years with the general prison population. Her conviction was overturned in 1992. She then explained the troubles of reconnecting with her children, who were 9 years and 10 months old at the time of her conviction. Since then, Jacobs has established “a very good” relationship with her daughter.  At this point in the talk, Jacobs invited her husband back to the podium, for the third section of the talk.

The last section of the event was comprised of the couple highlighting their joint history and their current activities. After meeting in Ireland in 1998, the couple founded the Sunny Center; a charity organization for wrongfully incarcerated individuals to aid in the transition from being wrongfully imprisoned to life in the outside world.  “We had wanted to do something to help other people go through what we had gone through,” said Pringle of their motivation to establish the Sunny Center. The couple maintained the importance of helping wrongfully convicted individuals and urged those in attendance to create an organization similar to the Innocence Project. Pringle also encouraged people to forgive those that have hurt them, claiming that those individuals did “the best they could at that point in time.”

Jacobs and Pringle travel the world relating their story and their message to others.

“The more people who speak out, the more justice can be served,” said Pringle.  Jacobs added that they “…hope that each of you [attendees] will find some way to help [eliminate injustice in the justice system.]”

Rowan Humphries ’19 said of the event’s impact on her, “I’ve heard a lot about injustice in the justice system, and you read about it in the newspaper, but hearing them [Sunny and Peter] tonight really gave a face to injustice, and seeing their individual stories really brought it home to me in that this is a serious issue.”

“We need reform [in the justice system] now,” Humphries continued. “This is something that affects real people in their everyday lives and it is just so wrong.  We need to stop it.”

Arielle Huitrón ’20 felt similarly, remarking, “Our justice system is still corrupt.”

Also in attendance was Eli King, who was “very impressed by the way that each of them [Jacobs and Pringle] managed to find a way to live their lives despite having what we would consider a life taken away from them.  I thought that was amazing.”

Jacobs and Pringle have co-authored a book, Time After Time, which is scheduled for publication in 2016.

Additional information can be found at the Sunny Center’s website: http://www.thesunnycenter.com and videos of the Clarke Forum’s programs can be found on their Web site: http://clarke.dickinson.edu or

Zita Petrahai ’18, Managing Editor, contributed reporting to this article.