As reported earlier this month by VNN, District attorney Steve Kunzweiler, who worked under Tim Harris (see this for why that is a problem), had his office protest April Wilkens’s 2022 parole in a letter. It is, at least partially, why she did not get a parole hearing.
It states that Kunzweiler’s officeĀ “believes the sentence imposed by the jury more than 20 years ago is appropriate, Wilkens is still a risk to the public, and Wilkens should not be granted parole for another 17 years” due to the fact that, if she were sentenced today with the same thing, she would not be eligible for parole until she had served 85% of her Life sentence.
However, we would like to note that, if she were tried again today, she likely wouldn’t even get a life sentence for what she did. Another woman, just a year after April killed Terry Carlton, claimed Battered Woman Syndrome too in killing her husband while he slept, got four years and THEN had her conviction overturned.
April’s was one of the first cases in OK to use Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) as a defense, so there was no real precedent when she used it. What’s more, Tim Harris claimed she “cried r-pe” and convinced the jury that April didn’t suffer from BWS, despite Lynda Driskell, a BWS expert, diagnosing her with it (though Driskell was not used during April’s unjust trial).
What is more, the jury WANTED April to have parole options by now, otherwise she would have been sentenced to Life without Parole. Thus, the DA saying that she shouldn’t be allowed parole undermines what the jury even wanted for April. Why would they have given her the possibility of parole if they wanted it withheld even longer? What would the jury say now, if they knew this was how she was being treated? The jury was not given the option of convicting April of manslaughter, which carries a minimum sentence of four years, or of any offense less than first-degree murder, which carries a minimum sentence of life in prison. The evidence was not sufficient to sustain a first-degree murder conviction, however. The OK Court of Criminal Appeals had previously ruled that juries must be given the option to convict first-degree murder defendants of lesser included offenses such as manslaughter when the evidence warrants, which did not happen at Aprilās trial. Other defendantsā convictions were overturned by the OCCA for this error, but not Aprilās. It is extremely rare for any court to fail to adhere to its own precedent, and OCCA Judge Gary LumpkinĀ remarked in a footnote in the order denying Aprilās appeal that he disagreed with the OCCAās failure in Aprilās case to follow its own precedent.Ā
So why is April still incarcerated?Ā
- Women and drug users were viewed more harshly in the 90s for not fitting into ideal womanhood.
- April had poor representation during her trial. Key witness were not called in and a tape of Terry Carlton admitting to how he abused her and was the sole perpetrator of violence was never played in court. April had turned the tape over to the police and it was mishandled. Now all that remains are audio clips of it, found online on our platforms and in some news coverage. The DA might have a copy locked in sealed evidence.
- April killed a very wealthy and connected rich man.
- Tim Harris was still allowed to protest her attempts to overturn her conviction, despite him being friends and taking campaign money from the Carltons
- The OCCA Judge Charles Johnson did not recuse himself every time from voting on her appeals, despite being a family friend of the Carltons (before the trial).
- The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole board in 2022 had no women on it when voting on April’s parole Jacket. It is also bowing to conservative pressure from the Governor and DAs. OK has one of the highest incarceration rates for women.
- Oklahoma over incarcerates and sentences too harshly.
All of this is backed up with evidence found linked in our timeline.
Pdf copy of the letter.Ā PDF copy of the DA protest letter
This post has been updated after its published date.
Free April Wilkens Blog 