Greetings from Death Row

The American singer-songwriter Steve Earle played cupid – albeit somewhat unintentionally – when he introduced former death row inmate Sonia ‘Sunny’ Jacobs to an Irishman who had also been sentenced to death.

Back in the mid-90s, after her conviction for the murder of two police officers had been lifted, and she was a free agent again, Jacobs met Steve Earle at an anti-death penalty rally in Tennessee. When she told him that she was going over to Ireland at the invitation of Amnesty International to participate in some lectures, Earle told her: “When you go to Ireland you’ve got to meet Peter Pringle.” He briefly told her Pringle’s story: given the name The Fugitive when he was on the run, Pringle had subsequently received the death penalty in 1980 for the murder of a Garda, which was a hang-able offence. He spent 15 years in prison before finally having his sentence overturned.
“I was talking to Steve Earle and he had been to Galway and had met Peter,” she recounts. “Steve knew Peter’s story, which is basically parallel to mine. So, it was totally awesome that we would meet. I finally went on a speaking tour and when I got to Galway I got in touch with Peter. He said he would come and hear my talk. And still, I didn’t know anything about him. He came to my talk, and I could tell that it was affecting him deeply. Afterwards, we shared our stories and then – after a few more trips back and forward – we decided that we were meant to be together.”
They now live together in Connemara, where Sunny has started a new life with her partner.
PLANE CRASH
Jacobs has written a remarkable autobiography entitled Stolen Time. She recounts how, in 1976, she and her partner Jesse Tafero – a young hippie couple who had lived to an extent outside the law – were travelling to Florida to seek a better life. They were accompanied by her nine-year-old son Eric, from a previous relationship, and the couple’s 10-month-old girl Christina. Unbeknownst to them, she says, Walter Rhodes – a casual acquaintance who had given them a ride – was actually violating his parole by leaving the state.
The way Jacobs tells it, Rhodes panicked when they were approached by a police car, and he shot dead two officers, Philip Black and Donald Irwin – and then tore off down the freeway before being captured at an armed roadblock. Jacobs, who was 27 at the time, was initially relieved – she felt that she had been rescued from the horrible ordeal. But the real nightmare was just about to begin.
There are wildly conflicting accounts of the sequence of events that led to the death of the two policemen. Whatever the truth might have been, Rhodes managed to cut a plea bargain for three-life sentences, in exchange for testifying that Jacobs and Tafero were responsible for the murder. They were both sentenced to die and – despite a long campaign to protest their innocence – Tafero was in fact put to death in a much-publicised, horribly botched execution. The electric chair malfunctioned, prompting the executioners to pull the switch three times. It took an excruciatingly long time for Tafero to die – horrified observers watched as flames shot out of his head and smoke came out of his ears during the barbaric execution.
Jacobs own sentence had, in 1981, been reduced to life.
“At that point in time I couldn’t afford to be angry,” she recounts. “We got a 10 minute phone call at the end. We had been connected spiritually, so strongly, for so long, that I needed to be there for him through every moment of everything that happened. So, that was more important that wallowing in whatever my own emotions might have been. It was only afterwards that I grieved.”
But Jacobs’ situation took an even more tragic twist the following year when her parents, who had been looking after her two children up to then, died tragically in a plane crash. “If I had to say what the worst moment was, it was when I heard my parents were killed. Nothing was worse than that. It was horrible. My children’s whole world was destroyed again – and this time there was no back-up. They had no net underneath them anymore. My daughter went into foster care and my son was out on his own. And I was helpless. I couldn’t do anything. That is the worst thing of all – to be helpless for your children.”
Jacobs was finally reunited with her children in 1992 when she was released – some 17 years after the ordeal had begun.
“I was just happy,” she says. “Happy. Happy. Happy. And confused. I was kind of lost. I didn’t know what to do. I had been told what to do for 17 years in a structured environment and, all of a sudden, it was like Rip Van Winkle! ‘Here I am! What do I do?’ Little by little I was able to manage that, but it was overwhelming at first. I was 27-years-old when it happened and I was 45 when I got out. I mean, what do you do? I had no home. I had no job. There’s no help. There’s no compensation. There’s no counselling. You spend 17 years in prison and they put you out and say, ‘Have a nice life’.
“Eventually, my son and daughter moved in with me. He brought his daughter with him and we all lived together as a family and then, one by one they left, which is the way it should be. My daughter met a nice man and moved out and my son met a woman and moved out. And my granddaughter and I became friends and now she’s in university and we communicate all the time. When they went off on their journeys, I felt I was able to continue on mine. And here I am.”
FESTER INSIDE
After her conviction for the murder of Black and Irwin was lifted, Jacobs had become something of a poster-girl for the anti-death penalty campaigners. “For a while I was kind of absorbed by the human rights movement and the anti-death penalty movement. But I realised that they didn’t understand that holding me up as the victim of injustice wasn’t really healthy for me. I was a survivor – not a victim. And although I wanted to help the cause, I needed to make a life and that wasn’t helping me.
“I left the movement and concentrated on that and when I had it together – and I knew who I was in relation to the new world and my role in it – then I went back to do work with the movement again, but sort of on my own terms. I delve in just to the point where it pinches and then I get away. It’s like wearing a pair of shoes that are too tight – and then I go home and I live my beautiful life. And heal myself again. But it’s important for me to tell the story every once in a while because it helps other people.”
Rhodes later admitted that he’d lied in his statement about the murders and is now back in prison after being tracked down for violation of parole in an entirely different offence. But Jacobs says she bears no ill-feeling towards him. “I did feel anger for a while, but the more anger I hold the less there is inside me for joy. I feel very proud that I held no animosity towards him,” she says. “In fact, if he had been living a decent life it was rather a shame that they wasted their manpower tracking him down, when there is so much more to be done.”
Had she ever wished that Rhodes would get the death penalty? “I would not want anyone to have the death penalty,” she insists. “Not him. Not even the prosecutor who was responsible for Jesse being executed while they actually held in their hands the evidence of his innocence. Now, that makes me angry. I am going to have to go and forgive him again after this interview is finished, which means I am going to have to clear the anger from myself and remember that it’s much more important for me – to be clear of the anger, so it doesn’t fester inside me.”
Jacobs is now working on several more books projects, including a book with Peter Pringle about their relationship. They also participate together in human rights campaigns, as well as therapeutic workshops. “We also do a lot of cross-border work – like peace and reconciliation work. It’s such an amazing feeling and honour to be part of that. That is one of the reasons that Ireland was the perfect place for me, because I devoted my life to peace and reconciliation – and here I’ve found an entire nation that’s devoted itself to the process of peace and reconciliation. So it’s just perfect.”

Stolen Time by Sunny Jacobs is out now in paperback, published by Bantam Books