photo: Carol Jacobsen

Since her death, the Clemency Project has dedicated our annual campaigns on behalf of freedom for battered women prisoners wrongly convicted and human rights for all women prisoners to Connie Hanes, 1940-2001. After serving over 25 years for a crime she did not commit, Connie Hanes committed suicide in her cell at Scott Prison on October 16, 2001. She had suffered too long from the injustice of the criminal justice system towards battered women in Michigan, and the medical neglect of the Michigan Department of Corrections who ignored her pleas for medical care for the pain and debilitating effects of rheumatoid arthritis. She was a dear friend to many of us, and we all miss her.