For incarcerated survivors of domestic violence, a new Oklahoma law is another chance at justice

TULSA, Okla. — April Wilkens has spent nearly half of her life in prison and away from her only son.
More than 25 years ago, she killed her ex-fiance in what she has long claimed was an act of self-defense. On that day in 1998, she said he had beaten and sexually assaulted her for hours before she got a hold of his gun and shot him. Wilkens, who said she survived years of abuse before that moment, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
A new law that went into effect Sept. 1 in Oklahoma will allow survivors of domestic abuse who have been convicted of crimes, like Wilkens, to apply for new, reduced sentences if the documented abuse played a significant role in their offenses.
Wilkens became the first person in Oklahoma to file a petition for resentencing under the new law. Her attorneys stood in line on her behalf in August at the Tulsa County Courthouse to submit the paperwork.
April Wilkens and her son Hunter before she was incarcerated in 1998. Hunter was 7 years old when Wilkens went to prison for killing her ex-fiance after years of documented physical and sexual abuse. Photo provided by Wilkens
To her attorneys, who have worked on her case for years, the moment was overwhelming.
“April has been in prison for more than 26 years simply for the act of surviving,” said her attorney Leslie Briggs. “It’s time for a second chance at life.”
Oklahoma is the latest state to reconsider how survivors of domestic abuse are sentenced.
Oklahoma has the highest rates of domestic violence in the country, according to data from YWCA which estimates that nearly half of women and more than 40 percent of men have been victims of domestic violence or sexual assault from a partner. The state ranks as the second worst in the country for the number of women killed by men.
Alexandra Bailey, a senior campaign strategist with the Sentencing Project, worked with attorneys and lawmakers in Oklahoma to help push this law forward. She said she was aware that Oklahoma was one of the leading incarcerators of women and had some of the worst domestic violence statistics in the country, but it was the stories of women like Wilkens that motivated her to get this law passed.
“The stories that came back to us were horrifying,” Bailey said. “Eventually you have problems and we can’t pretend that being tough on things is the solution. It’s a failed policy position and eventually you’re going to have to reckon with that.”
More than 66 percent of incarcerated women in Oklahoma reported that their partner physically abused them in the year before being in prison, according to a 2014 study from the University of Oklahoma’s sociology department.
National federal data is more sparse. The most recent report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics is from 1999, and relies on self-reported data. At the time, more than 57 percent of all women in state prisons and 16 percent of all men had experienced physical or sexual abuse in their life before prison. Additionally, nearly 40 percent of women and 6 percent of men in federal prison also experienced some form of abuse. There are no plans for a new study at this time, a spokesperson for the bureau said.
“I think it really speaks to Oklahoma’s epidemic around domestic violence and criminalizing women,” said attorney Colleen McCarty, who filed Wilkens’ petition alongside Briggs. “People in prison have experienced a whole lot of trauma and this will be the first time Oklahoma courts will be recognizing that kind of trauma in sentencing.”
Attorneys Colleen McCarty (left) and Leslie Briggs stand outside the Tulsa County Courthouse on Aug. 30 after filing for a petition for a new sentencing hearing for April Wilkens under the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act. Wilkens has been incarcerated for more than 26 years after killing her ex-fiance after years of physical and sexual abuse. Photo by Adam Kemp/PBS News
McCarty’s organization, Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, estimates that between 100 to 150 women in Oklahoma prisons right now could be considered for a new sentence under this law.
In 2016, Illinois passed a similar law that lets people in prison ask for a new sentence if their abuse wasn’t considered during their original trial. California lawmakers also introduced a bill in February that would let incarcerated domestic violence survivors seek a new sentence if they meet specific criteria. Similar legislation could be on the horizon in Louisiana as well.
New York passed a law in 2019 called the Domestic Violence Survivors’ Justice Act. Under certain conditions, this law allowed courts to reduce the sentences of domestic violence survivors if their abuse played a role in their conviction.
The law allows defendants or currently incarcerated individuals to provide documentary evidence corroborating that they were a survivor of domestic violence at the time of the offense. That evidence can include court records, police reports, social service records, hospital records or sworn statements from witnesses.
As of July 2024, New York has had 65 people receive retroactive sentencing relief.
These sentence reductions saved a collective 80 years of incarceration based on what would have been the survivors’ earliest possible release date, according to a February report from the Sentencing Project.
Kate Mogulescu, the director of the Survivors Justice Project, said her organization championed these reforms for more than decade before it became law in New York.
Mogulescu said seeing this change happen in a state like Oklahoma, which has one of the largest Republican supermajorities in the country, should signal to everyone how important it is to get these reforms passed.
“We found that this effort transcended our normal breakdown of conservative versus progressive politics,” she said
Gov. Kevin Stitt signed Senate Bill 1835 in May after it passed through both chambers of the Oklahoma Legislature. The Republican governor had previously vetoed a version of the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act but Oklahoma lawmakers overrode his veto.
For Wilkens and other incarcerated people in Oklahoma whose crimes came after years of documented abuse from a partner, the new law is welcome relief. They can now file for lesser sentences if they provide evidence that they were a survivor of abuse as a “mitigating factor” in the process. The courts can also consider sentencing ranges that are shorter for the initial crimes.
McCarty said Oklahoma has been known for “very draconian sentencing measures.”
“But now, we are finally seeing some hope,” she said.
McCarty said the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act is the first law that’s ever passed in the state that will give people who have a history with a statutory violent crime the chance at sentencing relief.
“It’s a cresting wave of people recognizing that incarceration is not the answer and that people are worthy of change and can live a better life,” she added.
After hours of being beaten and sexually assaulted by her partner on April 28, 1998, Wilkens shot her ex-fiance eight times, killing him. As she waited for the police, she believed they would understand she acted in self-defense.
Instead she was arrested and later sentenced for first-degree murder.
Before that moment, Wilkens repeatedly told the police — across 14 reports — how her partner raped, beat and stalked her since they first met in 1995. He broke into her home, kidnapped her at gunpoint, and blackmailed her. He was never arrested.
During the trial, she testified for three days in her defense, with her lawyer arguing that she suffered from battered woman syndrome. The court and judge did not accept this legal defense. Wilkens’ attorneys told PBS News her lawyer at the time didn’t call a qualified expert witness and left out important evidence. Wilkens was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
“I was imprisoned because my life was threatened, and in a split second, I reacted out of pure survival instinct,” Wilkens wrote in a 2023 op-ed for The Daily Caller. “I was imprisoned because I defended myself.”
Today, Wilkens is imprisoned at the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in McCloud, Oklahoma, and has spent the past years encouraging other women to heal and stand up for themselves.
“I am not the only woman in an Oklahoma prison who is a survivor of domestic violence — far from it,” Wilkens wrote. “Our legal system must account for the circumstances behind every crime, and sentences should be proportional depending on those circumstances.”
Shari McDonald, another Oklahoma woman whose case is being represented by Appleseed Project, was convicted of first-degree murder, and assault and battery with an intent to kill after her husband forced her to participate in an attempted robbery of a restaurant.
Shari, then 19, and her husband were on the way to a doctor’s appointment for their two-week-old baby. Her husband said he had a job interview at a Church’s Chicken. While there, he attacked two employees during the robbery. One later died from the injuries.
Bailey said she heard dozens of stories like Wilkens and McDonald’s when speaking with service providers and attorneys in Oklahoma.
“Every crime happens in a context,” Bailey said. “The second we take things out of context, we get it wrong. And so these laws put everything back into context. Every state should have this law.”
When implementing the law in New York, Mogulescu said there was “tremendous confusion” from the courts about the process for seeking resentencing. This led to judges denying some claims initially because they did not understand this was a new process, she said.
Another hurdle is the lack of representation or bandwidth from attorneys representing those incarcerated, Mogulescu said. These two issues caused significant delays when people started applying for resentencing in New York.
For attorneys McCarty and Briggs, it’s important to approach the new law with patience.
“We are trying to figure out how to get this done, and there will be questions about procedures and legal standards,” McCarty said, adding that Wilkens’ case is “an unparalleled example of a case that would qualify under this act.”
In the days leading up to the filing, Wilkens’ attorneys said they could sense her excitement and hope that she could be released and be reunited with her adult son, who was 7 when she was incarcerated and is now a father of his own.
“It’s been heartwrenching for her to not be a part of her granddaughter’s life,” McCarty said. “For the first time she’s beginning to envision a life outside of prison.”