Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2022

Disciplines

Criminal Law | Law

Abstract

In an ordinary home in Huron, South Dakota-sometime in the very early morning hours of Sunday, April 5, 1987-a young girl was murdered in her crib. By March of the next year, her mother, Debra Jenner, had been convicted of second-degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison. Although she became eligible for parole in 2003 after Governor Janklow commuted her sentence, her applications for discretionary parole were consistently denied. She remained incarcerated until last year, when she was finally granted parole. This essay embarks on a retelling of Debra Jenner's trial, her subsequent post-conviction proceedings, and her numerous parole hearings, including the one in which she finally won release in September of 2021. In the process, it confronts a criminal act so ghastly that it evades nearly every attempt to comprehend it and attempts to assess the proper role of mercy in the criminal justice system-specifically, in the context of applications for discretionary parole. [M]ercy is above this scepter'd sway. - Shakespeare

Publication Title

67 South Dakota Law Review 212

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