By Olivia Exstrum, Mother Jones – Cyntoia Brown, a sex trafficking victim serving a life sentence in Tennessee for killing a man when she was 16, will walk free this summer after spending over a decade incarcerated. The yearslong effort by criminal justice activists and victim advocates to obtain clemency for Brown, who killed a man soliciting her for sex, finally came to fruition Monday, when Gov. Bill Haslam ordered Brown be released on August 7.
“Cyntoia Brown committed, by her own admission, a horrific crime at the age of 16,” Haslam, a Republican, said in a statement. “Transformation should be accompanied by hope. So, I am commuting Ms. Brown’s sentence, subject to certain conditions.”
In advocating clemency, Brown’s supporters noted her pursuit of education while in prison. She got her GED and a degree from a local university. Brown’s quest for clemency became a cause célèbre for celebrities like Rihanna, Kim Kardashian West, and LeBron James.