Mick Clifford: The performance of innocence — what Sunny Jacobs’ story left out
Peter Pringle and his partner Sunny Jacobs near their home in Co Galway. Picture: Andrew Downes
Last Monday I received an email relating that Sunny Jacobs was going to appear at an event at the Law Society in Dublin next Thursday. Sunny hadn’t crossed my radar since her husband Peter Pringle died over two years ago.
She was scheduled to talk at Blackhall Place on the importance of pro bono legal work for death row inmates. This was a continuation of the campaigning she and Pringle had done for over twenty years, advocating for various miscarriage of justice groups on the basis that they had each suffered their own horrifying miscarriage. That was the narrative anyway. Whether it coincided with the facts was another matter.
By a startling coincidence, Sunny Jacobs died within hours of me being alerted to this event. On Tuesday morning, a fire at the Connemara cottage where she lived claimed her life and that of her 33-year-old carer, Kevin Kelly. Ms Jacob was 78.
It was an awful tragedy, a terrible way for two people to die. Earlier in her life, Sunny had been through some severe difficulties, including a period of five years on death row in the USA.
A native of New York, she had been in a car with her two children, her boyfriend Jesse Tafero and another man on a layby in Florida in 1976 when two policemen pulled up. The group had been reportedly hiding out from drug dealers at the time. Within minutes the cops, Philip Black and Donald Irwin, were shot dead.
The other man in the car, Walter Rhodes, turned state’s evidence. Tafero was executed in 1990. After Sunny’s sentence was commuted to life without parole, Rhodes confessed that he had been the shooter and then he retracted.
Sunny Jacobs was released in 1992 over disputed evidence from the original trial. She was not, as she would claim far and wide, exonerated for the murders.
In the late 1990s, she met Peter Pringle. In 1980, he and two other men had been convicted of the murders of Detective Garda John Morley and Garda Henry Byrne during an armed robbery outside Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon.
The three were sentenced to death but within six months this was commuted to forty years without parole. In 1995, Pringle was released after finding a fault with his conviction.
He was not exonerated as he would later contend repeatedly. Luck was on his side though. A retrial was ruled out because a garda central to the original conviction had since died. He wrote a book about the whole thing in which he suggested he’d been framed by a corrupt cop.
There is copious evidence that Pringle was at the shooting in Ballaghaderreen where the two gardaí were murdered. In my view, having researched the evidence deeply, he benefited from a justice system in which it is deemed better for the guilty to go free than risk the innocent being wrongly convicted. I fully subscribe to that system as I believe most people do.
Once the pair met, celebrity awaited them in liberal circles, particularly in the USA. The narrative of love at the end of respective miscarriages of justice, including death sentences, was compelling. Groups like the Innocence Project, which campaigns against the death penalty, embraced them.
They were feted in Hollywood circles, particularly after Sunny’s case featured in the Broadway hit and subsequent movie, .
They were an attractive couple. Pringle in particular was highly articulate. Frequently in his talks he blackened the names of gardaí he claimed had framed him. It was all lies.
He was always up for media interviews with absolutely no consideration for the families of the two gardaí. Detective Garda Morley had been the father of three young children. Garda Henry Byrne’s wife was pregnant with their third at the time of the murders.
American journalist Ellen McGarrahan investigated Sunny’s case, visited the couple in Galway and wrote a book about it. She was less than convinced about the narrative beloved of those who championed the Sunny and Peter story.
On the podcast she told me that there is a crucial difference between being exonerated and freed as a result of a wrongful, or unsafe, conviction.
“If you look at it in terms of the law, there is a very important legal principle that very rightly saw her conviction overturned,” McGarrahan says.
“But a wrongful conviction and factual innocence are separate issues and particularly in discussion around the death penalty those two things get merged. Following correct procedures is really important, especially in death penalty cases, but a conviction that is wrong doesn’t mean factual innocence.”
On one occasion about eight years ago when Pringle was due to appear at a college in Dublin to talk about his “miscarriage of justice” I rang the contact person for the event, whom I had met about her work some months previously, and asked was she aware there were serious questions about his innocence. She didn’t want to know. The narrative was too compelling. This was the same nearly everywhere the couple went.
After Ellen McGarrahan’s book, , was published, the widow of the murdered cop Philip Black contacted her.
“It meant a lot to me. She sent me a message after reading the book which I will always treasure,” Ellen says.
“I think the truth does have a place in justice and sometimes just being able to share the story really matters as well.”
Whether there is any question over Sunny Jacobs' innocence of murder, she surely must have known that her husband’s story just didn’t stack up.
People change. Everybody is entitled to a second chance to make good. As a couple, Sunny and Peter certainly brought attention to the abomination that is the death penalty in the USA. On a personal level both were reported to have many qualities. (Pringle spoke to me once briefly. Sunny never responded to attempts to contact her).
But starting a new life based on a lie, as Pringle did, and propagating a story that is offensive to bereaved families and colleagues of dead policemen is a long way from getting on the road to Damascus.
Organisations and individuals that campaign against the death penalty and miscarriages of justice are reinforced with a moral rectitude. The whole power of their cause is based on the most basic concept of justice, the differentiating of right from wrong.
Is it alright to use a compelling narrative to promote the cause of justice if the narrative is based on at least one falsehood? Where stands concern for the bereaved victims of murders? How well does it serve those who are genuinely the victims of miscarriage of justice?
Since her tragic death this week some people have spoken about the positive contributions Sunny Jacob made to people’s lives. She deserves to be remembered for those.
However, questions remain about how easily some were prepared to believe and disseminate the compelling narrative that served a purpose but was based on the dodgiest of premises.
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