A California woman was recently granted clemency 27 years after she killed a man named George Gilbert Howard for abusing and trafficking her as a teen.
According to news reports, California Gov. Gavin Newsom granted Sara Kruzan clemency on July 1, as she was previously convicted of killing Howard and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Her sentencing was later changed to 25 years to life with a four-year-firearm enhancement in 2010 by then-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In 1994, Kruzan fatally shot her captor in a California hotel room and said she had done so because he abused and trafficked her for sex beginning at the age of 13. Four years later, she was sentenced to die in prison and served 18 years until she was resentenced again, to serve 15 years to life plus a four-year firearm enhancement. In 2013, then-California Gov. Jerry Brown finally allowed her release.
“Ms. Kruzan committed a crime that took the life of the victim. Since then, Ms. Kruzan has transformed her life and dedicated herself to community service,” Gov. Newsom said in the signed pardon. “This act of clemency for Ms. Kruzan does not minimize or forgive her conduct or the harm it caused. It does recognize the work she has done since to transform herself.”
The governor’s office noted that a pardon doesn’t obliterate or erase a conviction, but it can assist in lowering the impact of one’s criminal history on their life.
Kruzan reportedly told the Los Angeles Times that Gov. Newson’s decision to grant her clemency gave her a sense of relief, as when she heard he agreed to petition her pardon it removed “these invisible chains that I didn’t realize were still taloned in (me).”
The former inmate reportedly advocates for reforming laws that ignore trafficking and abuse during sentencing and for changing how children are handled in the criminal justice system.
She also told the LA Times that she hoped case would “have a ripple effect for others who identify with different elements of what I experienced.”
