*Tonight exclusively on NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, correspondent Ron Allen speaks with the lawyers for Cyntoia Brown, the young woman granted clemency today by Gov. Bill Haslam for a murder she committed when she was 16 years old.
Brown’s story received national recognition from celebrities and criminal justice reform advocates who supported Brown’s claim that she murdered Johnny Allen in self-defense after being forced into prostitution.
Asked about Brown’s reaction when her lawyer Charles Bone told her she’d be released in August, Bone told NBC News, “she did a little dance.”
Her lawyer Houston Gordon told Allen: “I think she’s going to be able to help hundreds if not thousands of young people.” Her lawyer Ed Yarborough added, “I think…this also gives a tremendous amount of hope to people who are still in prison.”
The interview is part of NBC Nightly News’ new “Justice for All” series, a criminal justice series focusing on unjust sentencing and unreliable convictions, highlighting the stories of the wrongfully accused and the new ways of seeking justice.
Tomorrow Holt speaks to Matthew Charles, one of the first prisoners to be released under the brand new federal criminal justice reform law. Charles’ story gained national attention this summer after he was granted an early release from a drug conviction in 2016, only to have his sentence re-imposed last year over a technicality.
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