Mary Prince | |
|---|---|
 Prince in 1977 | |
| Born | 1946 (age 76–77) Richland, Georgia, U.S. |
| Children | 2 |
Mary Prince (born 1946; also called by her married name Mary Fitzpatrick [1] until the couple officially separated in 1979 [2] ) is an African American woman wrongly convicted of murder who then became the nanny for Amy Carter, the daughter of US President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter, and was eventually granted a full pardon. [3] [4]
She was born "in stark rural poverty" in 1946 in Richland, Georgia, the second of three sisters. She did not recall her father, and her mother and stepfather separated when she was aged about 9. Her older sister Carrie Francis died of a brain abscess when Mary was 12, after which she dropped out of school to look after her younger sister. She briefly married at age 14, and had her first son. A year later she began work as a domestic. She became pregnant with her second son in New York in 1964, before returning to Georgia in 1967, where she eventually became a cashier in a restaurant. [1]
When she lived and worked in the White House, her sons stayed in an apartment in the working-class Washington suburb of Suitland, Maryland and were looked after by her sister during the day, while she took a taxi to take care of them in the evening before returning by taxi to the White House late at night to be up early for Amy. [2] She officially separated from her husband in 1979, and changed her name back from Mary Fitzpatrick to Mary Prince. [2] She is a devout Christian. [2]
She was sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of murdering another woman's boyfriend in April 1970 in Lumpkin, Georgia. [1] [2]
She and her cousin Aniemaude had gone into a bar in Lumpkin, and Aniemaude got into an argument. [1] In 1977 Mary said: “I went outside and heard a shot. Aniemaude and this woman were fighting over Aniemaude’s gun. I didn’t know anything about guns, but I tried to take it away and it went off. We didn’t know it had hit anyone.” [1] Clare Crawford added: "The other woman, however, claimed that Mary seized the gun and deliberately fired it, killing the woman’s boyfriend." [1]
Prince was defended by a white court-appointed lawyer whom she first met on the day of the trial. [2] [1] [3] In 1977, she said "I was under the impression I was pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter, but it turned out to be murder." Jimmy Carter (in 2005) and Kate Andersen Brower (in 2015) both wrote that her lawyer advised her to plead guilty and promised a light sentence. [2] [3] Clare Crawford wrote in 1977 that "Her attorney says that he read the indictment to Mary before she made her plea". [1] Prince said in 1977 that she saw her lawyer twice for 10 or 15 minutes and that she spent a total of less than an hour in court before receiving her life sentence. [1]
Jimmy Carter says Prince was lucky the dead man was not white, as she would then have "likely" suffered the fate of Lena Baker, a black woman pardoned in 2005, 60 years after being executed by electric chair. [3] Rosalynn Carter said that she was convicted because of the color of her skin. [2]
Prince became Amy's nanny in 1971 while Jimmy Carter was governor of Georgia and she was a trusty prisoner assigned to the governor's mansion, [5] after being interviewed in December 1970 [1] and chosen that month by Rosalynn Carter to look after Amy because Rosalynn was convinced of her innocence. [2]
In 1975, when Jimmy Carter's term as governor ended, Prince was sent back to prison. However, in January 1977 she was able to travel to Washington for Carter's inauguration as U.S. president. [1] Partly thanks to a letter to the parole board by First Lady Rosalynn Carter, [4] [2] and partly thanks to Jimmy Carter, who asked to be designated as her parole officer, [3] [2] Prince was reprieved, and was able to live and work at the White House for the four years of Carter's presidency. [3] [1] [2]
She was eventually granted a full pardon after "a reexamination of the evidence and trial proceedings by the original judge revealed that she was completely innocent". [3] [4] [2]
As of 2015, she lives near the Carters in Plains, Georgia, and sees them frequently, [2] and she still sometimes babysits for their grandchildren. [4] [2]
When she was in the White House, her story was widely reported in the media, and some of the coverage was "not ... kind". [2] The coverage included a skit on Saturday Night Live , with Amy played by Sissy Spacek, and Prince played by comedian Garrett Morris in drag. [2]
Jimmy Carter dedicated his 2004 book, Sharing Good Times, to Prince, and discusses her in his 2005 book, Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis, as an example of the dangers of racism and of the death penalty, saying that had the dead man been white, she would "likely" have been wrongfully executed like Lena Baker. [3] Prince is also featured in the 2015 Kate Andersen Brower book The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House. [4] [2]
Writer, convicted murderer, prison escapee and former Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur, in her book Assata: An Autobiography , written from Cuba which has no extradition treaty with the United States, creates a critical portrait of Carter's relationship towards Mary Prince, comparing Carter's treatment of Mary as akin to that of a domestic slave and stating that this is a notable example of how the criminal justice system perpetuates Black and Third World people's enslavement. [6]
James Earl Carter Jr. is an American politician and humanitarian who was the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, Carter was the 76th governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975, and a Georgia state senator from 1963 to 1967. At age 99, he is both the oldest living former U.S. president and the longest-lived president in U.S. history.
Eleanor Rosalynn Carter was an American writer, activist and humanitarian who served as the first lady of the United States from 1977 to 1981, as the wife of President Jimmy Carter. Throughout her decades of public service, she was perhaps best known for being a leading advocate for women's rights and mental health.
Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, a women's prison in the town of Bedford, New York, is the largest New York State women's prison. The prison previously opened under the name Westfield State Farm in 1901. It lies just outside the hamlet and census-designated place Bedford Hills, New York.
A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the jurisdiction.
The Black Liberation Army (BLA) was an underground Marxist-Leninist, black-nationalist militant organization that operated in the United States from 1970 to 1981. Composed of former Black Panthers (BPP) and Republic of New Afrika (RNA) members who served above ground before going underground, the organization's program was one of war against the United States government, and its stated goal was to "take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States." The BLA carried out a series of bombings, killings of police officers and drug dealers, robberies, and prison breaks.
Bill Clinton was criticized for some of his presidential pardons and acts of executive clemency. Pardoning or commuting sentences is a power granted by the Constitution to sitting U.S. presidents. Scholars describe two different models of the pardons process. In the 'agency model' of pardons the process is driven by nonpolitical legal experts in the Department of Justice. In contrast, Clinton followed the 'presidential model', viewing the pardon power as a convenient resource that could be used to advance specific policy goals.
Oscar Collazo was one of two Puerto Rican militants of the Nationalist Party who on November 1, 1950, attempted to assassinate U.S. President Harry S. Truman in Washington, D.C. He had been living in New York City after growing up in Puerto Rico.
Sundiata Acoli is an American political activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1974 for murdering a New Jersey state trooper. Acoli was granted parole in 2022 at the age of 85.
Amy Lynn Carter is the daughter of the 39th U.S. president Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter. Carter entered the limelight as a child when she lived in the White House during the Carter presidency.
Lena Baker was an African American maid in Cuthbert, Georgia, United States, who was convicted of capital murder of a white man, Ernest Knight. She was executed by the state of Georgia in 1945. Baker was the only woman in Georgia to be executed by electrocution.
Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women is a prison facility for women of the state of New Jersey Department of Corrections, located in Union Township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey, near Clinton. Its official abbreviation is EMCFW. The facility was named for Edna Mahan, one of the first female correctional superintendents in the U.S.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
In the United States, life imprisonment is amongst the most severe punishments provided by law, depending on the state, and second only to the death penalty. According to a 2013 study, 1 of every 20,000 inhabitants of the U.S. were imprisoned for life as of 2012.
Opened in 1969, Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison (GDCP) is a Georgia Department of Corrections prison for men in unincorporated Butts County, Georgia, near Jackson. The prison holds the state execution chamber. The execution equipment was moved to the prison in June 1980, with the first execution in the facility occurring on December 15, 1983. The prison houses the male death row, while female death row inmates reside in Arrendale State Prison.
Capital punishment was abolished in Colorado in 2020. It was legal from 1974 until 2020 prior to it being abolished in all future cases.
Kelly Renée Gissendaner was an American woman who was executed by the U.S. state of Georgia. Gissendaner had been convicted of orchestrating the murder of her husband, Douglas Gissendaner. At the time of the murder, Gissendaner was 28, and her husband was 30. After her conviction, and until her execution, Gissendaner was the only woman on death row in Georgia.
On October 12, 2012, Ryan Carter Poston, an American attorney from Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, was shot to death by his on-again off-again girlfriend Shayna Michelle Hubers. After a trial in the Campbell County circuit court, Hubers was convicted of murder on April 23, 2015. She was sentenced to 40 years in the Kentucky Department of Corrections on August 14, 2015, with parole eligibility after 20 years. On August 25, 2016, Hubers' conviction was overturned on appeal when one of the jurors in her murder trial was revealed to be a convicted felon. Hubers was convicted of murder during her second trial on August 28, 2018. On October 18, 2018, she was sentenced to life imprisonment with parole eligibility after 20 years.
The Richmond child murder was the case of Amy Gregory who was convicted in 1895 of strangling to death her daughter, Frances Maud Gregory, whose dead body was found on the ice in the Old Deer Park, Richmond, England. She was granted a reprieve from execution by the Home Secretary.
The home of Jimmy Carter, who was the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, and his wife Rosalynn Carter (1927–2023) is located at 209 Woodland Drive in Plains, Georgia, United States. It is the only house that the Carters owned; they have occupied it since 1961.
CHAPTER VII - Race and the Residence: ...Mary Fitzpatrick, as she was known at the time, was sentenced to life in prison. (She took back her maiden name in 1979 after officially separating from her husband.) Yet before the year 1970 had come to an end, Prince had been selected by Rosalynn Carter to care for her daughter at the governor's mansion. Mrs. Carter was convinced that the young woman had been unjustly convicted. "She was totally innocent," Rosalynn Carter says. Forever loyal to their daughter's nanny, the Carters have practically adopted her as a member of their family. ... But Mrs. Carter was so confident in Prince's innocence that she wrote to the parole board and secured her a reprieve so that Amy's beloved nanny could work for them at the White House. Even more remarkably, the president had himself designated as Prince's parole officer. Ultimately, after a reexamination of her case, Prince was granted a full pardon.
{{cite book}}: External link in |quote=My last book, Sharing Good Times, is dedicated "to Mary Prince, whom we love and cherish." Mary is a wonderful black woman who, as a teenager visiting a small town, was falsely accused of murder and defended by an assigned lawyer whom she first met on the day of the trial, when he advised her to plead guilty, promising a light sentence. She got life imprisonment instead ... A reexamination of the evidence and trial proceedings by the original judge revealed that she was completely innocent, and she was granted a pardon.
Rosalynn Carter, who believed Prince was wrongly convicted, secured a reprieve so Prince could join them in Washington. Prince was later granted a full pardon; to this day she occasionally babysits the Carters' grandkids.
Once you're in prison, there are plenty of jobs, and, if you don't want to work, they beat you up and throw you in the hole. If every state had to pay workers to do the jobs prisoners are forced to do, the salaries would amount to billions. License plates alone would amount to millions. When Jimmy Carter was governor of Georgia, he brought a Black woman from prison to clean the state house and babysit Amy. Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and more prisons are being built and even more are on the drawing board. Who are they for? they certainly aren't planning to put white people in them. Prisons are part of this government's genocidal war against Black and Third World people.
| Work |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Books | ||
| Family |
| |
| Home | ||
| Related | ||
