How Georgia’s Party to a Crime Law Traps Innocent Women

Today’s story is co-published with Capital B Atlanta, part of Capital B, a Black-owned, nonprofit local and national news organization reporting for Black communities across the country. Follow them on Twitter @CapitalB_ATL and subscribe to the weekly newsletter.

A Georgia law allows prosecutors to charge people for crimes they never committed. I know this first hand – I was charged under this law and have been incarcerated for 20 years.

In 2004, I was with three young men who hatched a plan to rob a man after their attempts to use me in a prostitution trade failed. They lost control of the robbery, which then escalated into murder. I waited in the car, unaware of the violence. Nevertheless, as a “party” to my co-defendants’ accusations, I was sentenced to life imprisonment.

In Georgia, people like me can be charged as “participants in a crime” if they intentionally aid or abet the commission of a crime or if they intentionally advise, encourage, or instruct another person to commit a crime. But if a jury finds someone guilty, they are convicted of the original crime itself.

This means that a person can be charged with involvement in a crime, no matter how minor their involvement. For example, if you drive someone who is stealing candy at a supermarket but they shoot the cashier instead, you could be charged with murder even if you had no knowledge of the perpetrator’s plans. There is no upper limit; This charge can result in a felony conviction and can result in sentences that quite often include life without the possibility of parole or as harsh as the death penalty.

This is not a rare occurrence, although few records document these cases.

After informally surveying 150 women at my facility this summer, I found that 38 percent of women were charged as “participants” in the crime and convicted of a violent crime. Of that number, 15 percent were sentenced to life in prison without parole, 55 percent were sentenced to life or life plus, and 10 percent received more than 20 years in prison.

In other words, more than a third of the women incarcerated alongside me are here because they were around other people who committed crimes – often men or abusive partners. This aligns with a 2020 survey by The Appeal of more than 600 women convicted of murder in the United States. About 33 percent of those who responded to the survey were convicted with a male co-defendant. Almost half of these women were convicted alongside their abusive partners.

One woman, Karen Eckman, was considered a participant in the crimes of aggravated murder and armed robbery. She received a life sentence for a crime she committed when she was 15, although she says she was coerced into it by her co-defendant and was not directly involved. Because her boyfriend, the perpetrator of the crime, killed himself before her arrest, Eckman, along with another male co-defendant, were held responsible for her actions. Even 28 years later, she continues to be denied parole.

Another woman, Elizabeth Joyner, faced similar charges and received a lengthy prison sentence despite never entering the crime scene. Joyner was an alleged victim of domestic violence and said she was forced to become involved. These cases and my own raise concerns about gender dynamics, coercion and disproportionate punishment. Several studies in numerous cultures have found that women are often forced into illegal behavior by men, but Georgian laws do not take this into account.

My survey also found that women with male co-defendants received harsher sentences than those with female co-defendants, showing how disproportionately women in Georgia are affected by these charges.

This disproportionate punishment harms women’s mental health, families and sense of justice.

I was sentenced to life in prison for my minor involvement in a crime largely committed by one of my three male co-defendants. The initial shock I experienced after my trial damaged my mental and emotional health – damage that has since been compounded by decades of stress and trauma in the prison system. At first, my family and I were in disbelief that I was then judged and sentenced as if I were the main perpetrator of a violent crime. Our pain left us with a distrust of the justice system and a deep sense of insecurity. My incarceration was proof that life can be dangerously unpredictable and that the people and social systems with which we interact cannot be trusted.

For me, this insecurity has led to chronic anxiety and depression, manifested by avoidance behavior, irritability, inflexibility, poor self-care, low self-esteem, hypervigilance, night terrors, and sensory intolerance. As a result, it became increasingly difficult to function as the years of disproportionate punishment destroyed my health and my life.

In the prison system, incarcerated women face increasing levels of lethal violence and negligence, deteriorating conditions and parole systems that limit any possibility of reintegration. Programs and educational opportunities have declined. Persistent staff shortages, increasing gang violence and the presence of drugs have made institutions unstable. All of this fosters an environment in which women, who in some cases have had little involvement in a crime, are subjected to torture and injustice.

In my community, in the largest women’s prison in the state of Georgia, those charged with complicity in a crime appear to struggle with learned helplessness, mental illness, physical illness and substance abuse at higher rates than the rest of the population. Living with injustice in the hostile environment of prison life has weakened our strength, diminished our hope, and irreversibly damaged our health. But we still call for help.

A few months ago, as I walked back to my assigned dorm after dinner, I looked across the short distance to a neighborhood adjacent to the facility. The nearby subdivision is a reminder that freedom is unattainable, even if it exists on the other side of the fence.

As I walked, the mood was relaxed in the absence of guards, and the conversations around me were casual and pleasant – a camaraderie I often experience in my community, despite the instability of our environment. The reality of my situation – a life sentence – was completely unknown to me that evening, as it is most days: a testament to the human capacity to adapt and endure. The branches of the trees were bare, the visibility was clear, and when I looked at one of the houses across the yard, a woman was taking out her trash. As I watched her lift the black plastic bag into a trash can, seemingly without noticing, I felt the urge to call her for help.

It was an absurd idea. I was convicted by a court of crimes – violent crimes. I have exhausted my appeal options. The mandatory sentence I am serving is public knowledge and many people who know and love me know exactly where I am. But for a moment, my subconscious reached beyond the responsibility I try to take for myself and my actions, beyond the inescapable guilt that Georgia law imposes on me.

For a moment I felt the full weight of the disproportionate punishment made possible by participation in a crime. I felt like I had been kidnapped, trapped, hidden, and tortured in the Georgia prison system for the past twenty years. I realized that very few people are likely aware of the prevalence of this problem – enabled by the party involved in sentencing in this state.