Woman who killed pimp at age 16 pardoned by California governor [View all]
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday pardoned a former inmate who received a life sentence when she was a teenager for killing her former pimp.
It's the final step in an official redemption that has spanned more than a decade and three governors of both political parties.
Hers was among nearly three dozen such pardons and clemencies Friday that also affected older and younger offenders. They included 82-year-old Henry Pachnowski, who was born to Polish parents who were later imprisoned in Nazi labor camps in World War II.
Sara Kruzan was 16 when she killed George Gilbert Howard in a Riverside motel room. She was 17 when she was sentenced to die in prison for the 1994 murder of the man she said had sexually abused her and trafficked her for sex starting when she was 13 years old.
She served 18 years in prison until Newsom's predecessor, then-Gov. Jerry Brown, allowed her release in 2013.
Brown's predecessor, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, had commuted her sentence to life with the possibility of parole just before he left office in early 2011.
By then Kruzan had become something of a cause célèbre for state lawmakers and reform groups seeking to soften harsh life sentences for those who committed their crimes as juveniles.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Woman-who-killed-pimp-pardoned-by-California-17280465.php
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