Gaile Owens, the Tennessee woman who was scheduled to be executed last year before her sentence was commuted to life by then-Gov. Phil Bredesen, will be released from prison today after 26 years, The Tennessean reports. Owens, 59k was sentenced to die in 1986 for paying a man to kill her husband.
Though the details didn’t come out in her trial, she later said that she suffered years of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse at his hands. She said abuse and his constant cheating was what prompted her in 1984 to troll the streets of Memphis, offering $5,000 to $10,000 to anyone willing to kill her husband. Sidney Porterfield, now 68, took the job and killed him with 21 blows from a tire iron. Porterfield remains on death row. A parole board voted 4-2 last month to release her.