Gov. Phil Bredesen said Wednesday that he had commuted the death sentence of Gaile W. Owens (left) to life in prison.
Bredesen said his decision was based on the fact that Owens had agreed to a plea bargain that was later rescinded and might have been abused by her husband. Owens was convicted in 1986 of hiring another man to kill her husband.
"Nearly all the similar cases we looked at resulted in life-in-prison sentences," Bredesen said.
The commutation order also grants Owens a credit for 1,000 days of her sentence and the right to earn additional sentence reductions. The decision means that Owens could be eligible for parole as soon as late spring 2012, Bredesen said.
Owens has refused media requests for interviews.
Her case attracted a team of influential, well-connected Nashvillians who began working months ago to save her life. The team included the high-powered public relations firm of McNeely Pigott & Fox, former Tennessean newspaper publisher and editor John Seigenthaler, Americana singer-songwriter Marshall Chapman and noted civil rights attorney George Barrett. They were joined by national and statewide women's organizations in their crusade.
They took up her cause without charging Owens one penny. Some opposed the death penalty under any circumstances and others were convinced that Owens was a victim of a legal system that unfairly ignored the abuse she suffered during her 13-year marriage to Ron Owens.
“As heinous as the crime was, the record of how Tennessee has dealt with similar cases over the last century makes it clear that her death would have been a terrible miscarriage of justice,’’ said John Seigenthaler, former Tennessean publisher and editor, who has been an advocate for Owens.
“I was on the golf course when I found out’’ about the clemency, he said. “It was like hitting a hole in one.’’
Case history
During her trial, two decades ago, Owens would not testify, and the jury never heard about any abuse from other defense witnesses. She admitted her guilt, both to police in 1985 and in a letter she sent to the governor in 2009.
Ron Owens, 37, was a hospital nurse who worked through the ranks to become associate director of nursing at Baptist Hospital in Memphis. After Sunday services at Abundant Life Fellowship Church, he often stayed late to play basketball. He coached teenagers.
He stayed behind on Feb. 17, 1985, to play ball while his wife and two sons, ages 12 and 8, went to her sister’s house to play board games and eat tacos.
Gaile Owens and her children arrived home after 11 p.m. and found a bloodied Ron Owens dying on the living room floor. He had suffered a savage beating and died a few hours later at the hospital.
During the earliest stages of the investigation, police thought robbery was the motive. That changed a few days later, when a man called a federal agent with a tip.
Detectives learned Owens had spent months cruising crime-ridden neighborhoods in Memphis offering $5,000 to $10,000 to just about anyone who would talk with her about killing her husband.
She found a mechanic and ex-con named Sidney Porterfield who ran a garage at Second and Marble in Memphis.
They discussed fees for the killing ranging from $5,000 to $15,000, but they never agreed on an actual amount. She and Porterfield met again on Feb. 17, 1985. They discussed the murder, but Owens told police she left thinking it wasn't going to happen.
But that night, while the woman and her children were at her sister’s house, Porterfield went to the Owenses’ home on Scepter Drive and pummeled Ron Owens 21 times with a tire iron.
Police arrested Owens five days after the murder.
When detectives asked her why she wanted him killed, Owens said, “I really don’t know, except that I felt like I had had all I could take over the years, just the mental abuse I felt like I had been through.’’
Later, attorneys and psychological examiners pulled details out of Owens that cast the couple’s relationship in a different light. Her lawyers said she had been coerced into sexual acts that actually made her throw up, and sex so rough it injured her. There was no proof, they said, because Owens did not seek medical treatment.
During a hearing three months before her trial, Owens’ court-appointed attorneys asked a judge for money to pay for a psychological exam because they believed she had been abused. He agreed to appoint a psychiatrist to examine her but did not let her defense team choose its own specialist.
Lynne Zager, a psychiatrist who talked to Owens later that month, said in court paperwork that Owens talked of her husband’s affairs, sexual humiliation and “overall mistreatment of her.’’ Though Owens never told her she was physically or sexually abused, Zager said she believed Owens had been battered.
But none of the details about her abuse ever came out during her trial. Court documents say Owens hamstrung her defense by refusing to testify or let her attorneys interview family members who might have known. Zager was never called to testify during her trial.
At trial, Assistant District Attorney Don Strother told the jury Owens had her husband killed over money. She had been caught embezzling money from employers, he said, and owed thousands. She hid the debts from her husband, Strother said, for fear he would leave her and take the children.
Early on, her attorneys said, Owens expressed a desire to plead guilty so that her family wouldn't have to live through a trial.
On Jan. 3, 1986, prosecutors offered her life in prison in exchange for a guilty plea. But it came with a big caveat: Porterfield had to plead guilty, too. Though defense attorneys asked for separate trials for Owens and Porterfield, the district attorney's office wanted to try them together because they conspired to kill Ron Owens.
Owens took the deal the day it was offered. But Porterfield refused, and the bargain was taken off the table. Later, she tried to plead guilty in court but the judge would not separate her case from Porterfield's — they had to go to trial together or plead together.
Because of the abuse issues raised in her later appeals, Owens' supporters were convinced she does not deserve the ultimate punishment.
Juror weighs in
Fulya Sobczak was one of the 12 jurors that sentenced Owens to death 25 years ago. Six months ago, she wrote a letter to Bredesen asking for Mercy on Owens' behalf. She did not know about the governor's decision until she was contacted by a reporter.
"I'm so relieved and I'm so thankful," Sobczak said. "I feel like something has been lifted off my shoulders."
Immediately after the trial, she said, she had no problems with the death sentence. But a few years later, she said, she started developing feelings of guilt. When she learned about the abuse Owens experienced at the hands of her husband, she came to the conclusion that the death penalty was wrong.
"I'm very excited for her," Sobczak said.
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