KANSAS CITY (AP) - More than 60 Missouri lawmakers and a group of Georgetown University law students are backing a new effort to persuade Gov. Jay Nixon to grant clemency to a Missouri woman who they believe was wrongly convicted of killing her husband.
Patty Prewitt was a 34-year-old mother of five when her husband, Bill, was shot and killed in 1984 as he slept in their home in the rural east-central Missouri town of Holden. Prewitt said a stranger broke into the house, but authorities focused on her as the primary suspect. She had cheated on her husband and ex-lovers testified at her trial in 1985 that she had talked about killing him.
She was convicted and is serving a life sentence, with no chance of parole until 2036.
But for many, doubts remained. The defense said she joked about killing her husband, often right to his face. Her supporters say that at the time he was killed, the couple's relationship had improved. Plus, she had been receiving threatening phone calls before his death and someone had broken into the home before the shooting.
Multiple clemency requests have been filed over the years, but Prewitt's backers - including about 1,100 who have signed an online petition - believe this time is different.
In August, law students at Georgetown University began examining her case as part of a Community Justice Project at the school. The law students were in Jefferson City on Friday after visiting the 61-year-old Prewitt on Thursday at the state prison in Vandalia.
The students submitted the latest clemency petition Tuesday, alleging police work in the case was shoddy. They also contend the defense was not informed that a neighbor had claimed to see a strange vehicle on the night of the killing, which would have supported Prewitt's claim that an intruder was responsible.
"Our theory was this was a small-town murder and the police wanted answers quickly and from the get-go they were set on Patty," said Brian Reichart, a law student. "A lot of the obvious things that should have been done weren't."
Asked to comment on the students' findings, Holden police chief Rick Martin said there is no longer anyone in the department who was involved in that case. He says he became chief in 1990 and is the longest-serving in the department.
A clerk at the Johnson County prosecutor's office said no one was available to discuss the case Friday.
In addition to the efforts of the law students, 63 lawmakers signed a petition earlier this year asking Gov. Jay Nixon to commute Prewitt's sentence.
Rep. John Burnett, D-Kansas City, who circulated the petition and submitted the signatures in February, attended the trial as a young lawyer because the senior partners at his firm were handling Prewitt's defense. She declined to accept a plea deal that would have given her the chance for parole after five to seven years.
To Burnett, the prosecution's case seemed circumstantial, and he was shocked when the verdict was announced.
"It was such a dramatic verdict," Burnett said. "When the verdict came back in, her children started screaming and ran out of the courtroom. It was really unexpected. I think I and most of the people didn't think she would be convicted."
After Burnett won election, people began asking him to help with Prewitt's clemency effort. He visited her in prison and found that she has gone to school, written poetry, taught other women to become personal trainers and works as a computer programmer.
"I was struck by how not bitter she is after all these years," Burnett said. "She seems to have a very positive outlook on life."
He said he believes she is truly innocent. Still, he was shocked at the number of signatures he collected.
"I couldn't get that many signatures for mother and apple pie," he said.
He said that practically everyone in the Democratic caucus signed the petition, including Rep. Mary Still. She said she has been asked to sign such petitions before but doesn't recall her ever lending her name to such an effort.
"I felt that it was the right thing to do," she said.
The matter will eventually rest with Nixon. His spokesman, Scott Holste, said the Board of Probation and Parole investigates clemency requests and makes recommendations to the governor. The governor is not bound by the recommendations.
Burnett is hopeful.
"I think," he said, "she has more of a shot now than she ever has."