MICHIGAN — The Michigan Women’s Justice and Clemency Project believes 10 Michigan women, convicted of murder, should be released because they were victims of domestic violence and didn’t get fair trials. One of the women is a former Farmington Hills fourth grade teacher who killed her husband with a hatchet. 

The group announced it was filing petitions for clemency with Gov. Rick Snyder on behalf of the women who were all convicted of first-or-second degree murder.  Some of the women have been in prison for years, while others have spent decades behind bars. 

Carol Jacobsen, a University of Michigan professor in women’s studies says the women are not a threat to anybody and that the whole social understanding of battery and abuse has changed since the 1980s and 1990s. Those were periods when many of the women were convicted, and in many of the cases the abuse was not raised at trial, according to Jacobson. Four of the cases occurred in Oakland County. Jessica Cooper, the Oakland County prosecutor said her office is monitoring the clemency petitions.