Cheryl Orange spent twenty-0ne years in prison for killing her abusive husband. She was not allowed to present battered-women syndrome evidence in her first trial, which hung. She pled guilty to second-degree murder rather than risk another trial for 1st degree murder. When the law changed to allow BWS evidence, she was granted a new trial after tireless habeas-corpus work by attorneys from the non-profit "Free Battered Women" in San Francisco.
The trial attorneys, near and dear to my heart, won an acquittal for Ms. Orange, who now drives a lime-green 1985 Thunderbird.
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/22/BAG83LTTPM1.DTL&hw=cheryl+orange&sn=001&sc=1000
