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Is True Crime Keeping Me in Prison?
TV producers exploited the worst mistake of my life. I’m not the only one.
When I was on trial, there were a couple of cheeky tabloid articles — “DA Seeks Instant Karma in Drug Killing” read one New York Daily News headline — because of the name I share with the slain Beatle, but the media wasn’t particularly interested in my case. In 2019, New York lawmakers passed the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, which empowered sentencing judges to reconsider whether the abuse that defendants suffered was a “significant contributing factor” to their crime and warranted a time cut. Some producers might argue that their shows acknowledge these mitigating circumstances — a dysfunctional and traumatic upbringing, severe mental illness, a learning disability — but I doubt the sensationalist titles and macabre tones leave any audience seriously grappling with them.
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