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REPLAY: Bonus episode with Colleen McCarty

·53 min·4 clips

Annie Bowles opens by thanking listeners for their patience after travel delays and birthday plans, and says she is back with a delayed bonus episode. She frames the conversation around Senate Bill 1470, what the bill is supposed to do, what case inspired it, and who Colleen McCarty and Appleseed are, since they helped build and introduce it. She says this is the second version of the bill. She also says the bill passed out of Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, which is why she made the trip up to Capitol Hill to show up in person. The episode then moves into a hard self-defense story. Bowles describes an abusive and terrifying situation in which the man threatened rape and murder and the woman believed him. She says that when he looked away for a second, the woman reached behind her, grabbed his gun, and he turned back and lunged at her. She emptied the clip, and he was shot eight times and died that night. Bowles says prosecutors filed a first-degree premeditated murder charge within 24 hours, which she presents as evidence that they were not treating this as a self-defense case. She also says the man was powerful, his father was powerful, and that donations from his father to District Attorney Tim Harris are documented, which she describes as part of the pressure around the case. Bowles says the woman had a credible claim of self-defense and battered women's self-defense, but the jury still convicted her. She emphasizes that the jury rejected her account and focused on what she should have done differently. Bowles says the woman has been in Mabel Bassett Correctional Center for 26 years, has been denied parole four times, and has also been denied commutation. She presents Senate Bill 1470 as a possible path to relief after the usual routes have failed, and closes by tying the legislation back to that failure of the system.

As heard by us

A legislative explainer that traces Senate Bill 1470 back to the case that inspired it.

The episode is a legislative explainer centered on Senate Bill 1470, the case that inspired it, and the role Colleen McCarty and Appleseed played in building and advancing the bill.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Follow the bill from Capitol Hill back to the case that inspired it.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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