The Girlfriends S3/Bonus Ep 2: Tina’s story

Summary

The Girlfriends: Jailhouse Lawyer – Season 3, Bonus Episode 2: Tina’s Story

Podcast: The Girlfriends: Jailhouse Lawyer
Host: Anna Sinfield (Novel/iHeartPodcasts)
Date: September 15, 2025
Episode Theme:
This bonus episode tells the gripping, complex life story of “Tina” (a pseudonym), whose journey from childhood abuse and addiction to violent crime and, ultimately, hard-won freedom through clemency, forces listeners to interrogate what justice can and should mean—especially for women marked by cycles of trauma. Unlike previous stories centered on wrongful conviction, this is not a whodunnit. Tina fully admits to her crime. The episode raises challenging questions about accountability, victimhood, punishment, and the need for compassionate reform of the justice system for women with lives shaped by abuse.

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Main Discussion Points and Insights

Tina’s Childhood: Roots of Trauma

• Abuse and Neglect:
  Tina begins her story with her earliest memories of maternal neglect and violence, including a severe incident in infancy:

  “My mother set me in a tub of hot boiling water and both my feet were burned.” (05:57)

• Foster Care & Broken Trust:
  Tina describes the instability of bouncing between foster care and abusive parents, noting brief feelings of safety with her largely absent father, only for that trust to be destroyed by “the worst thing a parent could do to a child.” (06:56)
• Aftermath:
  The trauma leaves Tina emotionally shattered, leading to teenage self-destruction:

  “By then I was so self-destructive.” (07:11)

Early Adulthood: Poverty, Addiction, and Survival

• Teen Motherhood:
  Tina becomes a mother at 15; loses custody due to inability to parent, feels “no idea how to be motherly.” (07:34)
• Desperation and Drug Dealing:
  As a struggling single parent and custodian for her siblings, she’s pushed into dealing and then using cocaine:

  “I just started sniffing cocaine on a regular basis as I drank my alcohol. ... Then I realized I had a habit ... Oh, shit. I'm hooked on this.” (09:27–10:14)

• Spiral into Crack Addiction:
  The addiction escalates, Tina transitions to smoking crack, losing custody again and tumbling fully into street life.

  “From that decision, I was just in the street chasing the drug.” (10:26)

Crime, Incarceration, and Cycles of Structure

• Coping with Prison:
  Tina recounts how her first stints in prison felt like relief—structure was comforting following her chaotic upbringing:

  “I was having the time of my life. ... I had no bills, no responsibilities. ... I do good with structured life.” (11:00–11:25)

• Relapse and Rehabilitation Attempts:
  Upon release, she relapses but later enrolls in a rehab program, determined to rebuild.

  “Yeah, I did good in that program. I was working, I was saving money to eventually move out.” (12:07)

Relationships and Downward Spiral

• The Relationship with Eli:
  In rehab, Tina meets Eli, and finds brief happiness in a sober, supportive relationship. They move in together.

  “I'm not on drugs. ... I'm working. I'm living life.” (12:52–13:13)

• Isolation, Depression, and Relapse:
  The relationship deteriorates; Tina becomes depressed, isolated, and returns to drug abuse:

  “I stopped working. I will stay in a dark room all the time.” (13:34)

The Crime: A Night of Violence

• Escalation:
  A minor argument with Eli triggers Tina’s buried traumas, compounded by withdrawal and drug use.

  “All those familiar and corrosive feelings of anger, fear, abandonment, and betrayal rise up in her chest.” (15:53)

• Drug-Induced Psychosis and Violence:
  In a haze, Tina boils grease and attacks Eli as he sleeps, followed by a knife assault.

  “I went in and threw it on him while he was asleep.” (16:49)
  “I pulled the knife out and he fell onto the bed. ... He says to me, ... ‘I love you.’” (18:29)

• Aftermath & Realization:
  Tina describes remaining in a high and confused state for over a day before calling 911:

  “I started coming to a little bit of reality ... I was saying to myself, how did I get here?” (19:31)

System Response: Confession, Psychiatric Care, and Rikers

• Taking Responsibility:
  Tina is honest with police, confesses without trying to deflect blame:

  “I went in with hours high and I committed the crime that I committed.” (25:30)

• Secure Hospital and Rikers:
  After initial assessment, time in a psychiatric hospital, she arrives at Rikers’ intensive unit for inmates with complex mental health history.

The Surprising Compassion of Eli

• Eli’s Forgiveness:
  Eli visits Tina in jail, offers forgiveness, and support:

  “I want you to know that I forgive you and that I’m going to be here to support you through all of this.” (27:59)

Legal Defense and Sentencing

• Linking Trauma to Crime:
  Public defender George DuPountis and, ultimately, the court recognize the causal connection between Tina’s history and her actions, resulting in a reduced sentence:

  “He was the first person to suggest to Tina that there might be a connection between her crime and her past experiences.” (28:51)

• Sentence:
  Pleading guilty to attempted murder; sentence reduced from 25-to-life to 16 years (29:00)

Inside Bedford Hills: Healing and Activism

• Self-Discovery and Peer Support:
  Tina throws herself into self-reflection and healing, attending the Family Violence program:

  “There was this program called Family Violence ... I went in open. I’m the only one talking for a good two weeks ... then from me talking, other people began to open up and talk.” (33:45–34:08)

• DVSJA and SJP:
  Tina learns about the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA), working with lawyer Kate Mogulescu (who will later support Kelly Harnett) to try for sentence reduction.

• Denied, Then Hope for Clemency:
  The DVSJA petition fails (“the abuse wasn’t substantial at the time of the crime”), but Kate pushes for clemency from the governor. Tina is deeply skeptical, citing racial and gender disparities in clemency grants:

  “Men get clemency. Women don’t get clemency in the state of New York.” (36:33)

Clemency and The Road to Freedom

• Unexpected Freedom:
  Tina is called to a prison office, expecting tragic news. Instead:

  “I just want to say congratulations to you. Soon as she said that, I knew, and I just started crying.” (38:23) “Governor Hochul has granted Tina clemency.” (38:31)

• Reflections on Survivors Left Behind:
  Tina expresses survivor’s guilt, feeling for other women “who deserved it more than me ... 70 and 80 years old … should be in my shoes that day.” (39:00)

Continuing The Fight—Survivors Justice Project

• Advocacy:
  Now free, Tina works with the Survivors Justice Project to improve the DVSJA, focusing on changing what the courts consider “substantial abuse.”

  “So it was substantial at the time of my crime. And that’s what we’re trying to make them understand ... so other women who are in the same situation can come home earlier because they’re still victims, and the courts don’t see it as that.” (40:38)

• Central Theme:
  Anna and Tina highlight the episode’s question—should justice focus on punishment, or helping people heal and break cycles of trauma?

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On How Trauma Lingers:

  “I walked my whole life with scars on my body and my emotions of all that happened to me throughout my life. So it was substantial at the time of my crime.”
  —Tina, (40:38)

• On Self-Destruction and the Search for Structure:

  “I do good with structured life. Being told when to go to bed, when your area has to be clean. I had no responsibilities, I had no bills, I had no children to take care of. So, yeah, it’s crazy to say, but that’s what it was for me.”
  —Tina, (11:00)

• Eli’s Radical Forgiveness:

  “I want you to know that I forgive you and that I’m going to be here to support you through all of this.”
  —Eli (according to Tina), (27:59)

• On the System’s Shortcomings:

  “Men get clemency. Women don’t get clemency in the state of New York. That’s just like a known fact.”
  —Tina, (36:33)

• On Feeling Unworthy of Mercy:

  “I just felt like there were so many other people that should be in my shoes that day.”
  —Tina, (39:00)

• Anna’s Reflections on Justice:

  “Is the goal to help or punish? In my mind, our social and legal structures should help citizens be the best they can be. Tina has already been let down by those systems time and time again. Locking her up will not break that cycle.”
  —Anna Sinfield, (41:18)

• On the Complexity of Victim and Perpetrator:

  “Tina did something terrible and she’s not afraid to own that. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that she’s also a victim and a survivor.”
  —Anna Sinfield, (41:46)

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Important Timestamps

• [03:18] Tina begins her narrative: awakening in Rikers, confused and reflective.
• [05:57] Tina details earliest, traumatic abuse (“tub of hot boiling water” incident).
• [09:27–10:14] Tina’s descent into cocaine addiction.
• [13:34] Describes how depression led her to relapse and further isolation.
• [16:49] Tina recounts the night of the attack—boiling grease and knife assault.
• [18:29] Aftermath of attack and Eli’s bewildering, loving response.
• [25:30] Tina’s confession and psychiatric assessment.
• [27:59] Eli visits Tina in jail, offers forgiveness.
• [29:00] Legal team successfully reduces sentence.
• [33:45] Tina details her time in Family Violence group in prison.
• [35:43] Explains the DVSJA denial based on legal definitions of abuse.
• [38:31] Tina receives clemency.
• [40:38] Tina’s advocacy with Survivors Justice Project.
• [41:18] Anna’s philosophical reflections on justice, punishment, and reform.

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Tone and Language

The episode is delivered with a mix of rawness and analytical distance. Tina’s voice is frank, reflective (“I was going to be willing and accepting of it. I was going to tell the truth of what happened.” [25:30]), and occasionally laced with dark humor. Anna Sinfield’s narration is compassionate but unsparing, foregrounding ethical quandaries without easy answers. The language throughout is conversational but unflinching.

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Conclusion

Tina’s Story offers a searing, empathetic case study in justice, accountability, and the often invisible scars trauma leaves. Rather than focusing on innocence or wrongful conviction, this episode wrestles with the blurred line between victim and perpetrator, ultimately asking: How do we balance consequences, accountability, mercy, and healing? Tina’s journey—from trauma, addiction, and violence to forgiveness, advocacy, and activism—is a call to rethink structures that too often punish but rarely help. The episode closes with the promise to continue exploring what true justice should mean for survivors, with expert perspectives in the next installment.

Transcript

[Tina]

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[Anna Sinfield]

Learn [e-mail] hey girlfriends, it's Anna here. Just wanted to let you know that this bonus episode is going to include some pretty difficult stuff. Mentions of child abuse, sexual assault, and an instance of very graphic violence. There'll be some swearing too, but you'll also get to hear the full story of a woman you first met back in episode seven, Tina. She introduced Kelly Harnett to her lawyer, Kate Mogulescu.

[Tina]

From the time I woke up in Rikers and looked at my environment, I was saying to myself, how did I get here?

[Anna Sinfield]

Tina, which is not her real name, has just woken up in Rikers island jail a few nights earlier. On January 30, 2016, she violently attacked her boyfriend.

[Tina]

How did I allow myself to get to this point in my life? How did I get to that point that I caused that much damage to another human being? And from that thought I went throughout my whole incarceration wanting to know, wanting to understand. How did this happen?

[Anna Sinfield]

You see, Tina isn't like Kelly, who has always maintained her innocence. Tina fully accepts that she committed a crime. She puts her hands up to it. She did something awful. But what kind of punishment fits a crime like hers? I'm Anna Sinfield and from the teams At Novel and iHeart podcasts, this is the girlfriend's jailhouse lawyer.

[Tina]

Yes, I got.

[Anna Sinfield]

You. Bonus Episode two, Tina's Story Tina's story starts with her mom.

[Tina]

I have no fond memories of my mother, but I love her with all. Here we go. Ooh, hold on.

[Anna Sinfield]

That's all right. Tina was born in 1974, but it isn't the start in life that any child deserves.

[Tina]

I did not grow up in a happy home at all.

[Anna Sinfield]

Tina says her mom was both neglectful and violent, and that abuse peaked when Tina was still just a baby.

[Tina]

My mother set me in a tub of hot boiling water and both my feet were burned.

[Anna Sinfield]

Tina is left with scars on her feet. She's quickly removed from the family home and put into foster care, which begins a years long cycle of being bounced between childcare services and then back to her parents. Each time she gets sent home to give it another go, another instance of abuse or neglect happens. Tina feels much safer when her dad is around, which he isn't. Often he's able to come between her and her mother's violent outbursts. Tina trusts him. But then the final time Tina moves back into her parents home, she says that one thread of trust is broken. I can't tell you exactly what happened, but it's the worst thing a parent could do to a child.

[Tina]

So when this situation did happen, I think it broke me. Throughout the rest of my teenage years, I was just all over the place, drinking, having sex with this person and that person and smoking cigarettes, not abiding by curfew. By then I was so self destructive.

[Anna Sinfield]

At 14 years old, Tina finds herself living with a foster family and pregnant. She gives birth to her son at just 15 and then has her daughter at 17.

[Tina]

I didn't know nothing about being a mother. Of course I know you give the baby a bottle, you change his pamper. But to actually be motherly, I had no idea whatsoever. And eventually they took him from me because of me not being a good mother. I don't even know how to say that. But to say it, flash forward a.

[Anna Sinfield]

Few difficult years and Tina's now 20 years old. She's back on her feet, living in an apartment in Newark, New Jersey. She's got her life back enough on track that finally her kids have come back to live with her. And it's not just her kids. She's also recently gained custody of two of her younger siblings. But while the state made sure her apartment was big enough for all five of them, she didn't get any extra child support money for her siblings. As a single income household of five, they're barely able to survive. One day outside the YMCA where she works, Tina gets chatting to a young guy selling drugs in the neighborhood.

[Tina]

He said, well, I can show you how you can sell, you know, coke and that'll get you the money that you need to take care of everything.

[Anna Sinfield]

Tina drinks and she smoked a bit of weed. Though she doesn't really do drugs. But standing on this street corner, she figures selling them could be a way out. A way out of poverty, but also out of the shadow of her and her siblings childhoods.

[Tina]

I'm like, cool. I'm like, yeah. So I basically put in the money from the job and my brother was actually out on the street hustling in a drug.

[Anna Sinfield]

One night, drunk and numbing her pain with booze, Tina's gaze turns to her stache.

[Tina]

I was like, I wonder what they get out of chasing this stuff so hard like that. So I tried the cocaine and I liked the feeling. And if I would never have been drunk with that question, I would have never tried. Took me like on a High that I was like, party like type. And I just started sniffing cocaine on a regular basis as I drank my alcohol. And I got a lot of more things done. Like I was the best employee of the month, I was the best parent of the year. Then I realized I had a habit one day when I didn't have it and I wanted it and it started being a problem. Oh, shit. I'm hooked on this.

[Anna Sinfield]

Tina realizes she's no longer capable of looking after the kids. So she makes a heart wrenching decision to give them up. They end up living with her old foster mum.

[Tina]

From that decision, I was just in the street. I was in the street chasing the drug. I had learned a new way to use the drug. I was no longer sniffing the cocaine. I learned how to smoke the cocaine, which is crack cocaine.

[Anna Sinfield]

Before she knows it, Tina's shoplifting and burgling to fund her new expensive habit. Getting into more and more trouble with the law. She builds up a pretty long rap sheet and spends her mid-20s in and out of correctional facilities. How did you find it?

[Tina]

Crazy thing is, I was having the time of my life. Yeah, I was with a young crowd there. We was running around. And you have to remember how I had been in the system. I'm used to this structured life. I do good with structured life. Being told when to go to bed, when your area has to be clean. I had no responsibilities, I had no bills, I had no children to take care of. So, yeah, it's crazy to say, but that's what it was for me, you know.

[Anna Sinfield]

Prison also gave Tina a crucial break from drugs. In this highly controlled environment, she's able to get clean and sober. But once she's released and back in the outside world, that structure she thrived in disappears. She gets back with an abusive ex for a while. She also starts using cocaine again. Desperate to get some stability back, Tina enrolls in a drug rehabilitation program.

[Tina]

I went to a program called ARC here in New York, I believe it was in Harlem. And yeah, I did good in that program. I was working, I was saving money to eventually move out.

[Anna Sinfield]

That's where she meets a guy we're calling Eli.

[Tina]

He was a funny little character, funny looking little character, and he was not my type whatsoever. But he used to have me laughing and all that I had been going through. That's how he got me. Always making a joke, putting a smile on my face, lifting my spirits and everything.

[Anna Sinfield]

Soon enough they become a couple and things are looking up. They're both sober, stable, and falling in love.

[Tina]

And there was another couple that had found the apartment and they needed someone else to move in with them, and they asked us, and we decided to move out with each other. By now, I'm not on drugs. I'm not drinking. I'm working. I'm living life. So we move into this apartment.

[Anna Sinfield]

By now, the good times don't last.

[Tina]

Things began to spiral. All the laughter was leaving. It started to be a lot of sneaky behavior.

[Anna Sinfield]

Tina and Eli start bickering all the time, and then they start to drift apart. In that isolation, Tina becomes depressed and withdrawn from the world.

[Tina]

I stopped working. I will stay in a dark room all the time.

[Anna Sinfield]

Unsurprisingly, she falls back into her old coping mechanisms.

[Tina]

I'm drinking more heavily, and on the corner, I saw a boy selling drugs. I went out to see that boy and bought drugs, and I started back on my bullshit.

[Anna Sinfield]

One night, Tina's drug taking and the tensions with Eli reaches a fever pitch. Because of her depression, she's pretty much unable to leave the house, which means she stopped working. So she's financially dependent on him. She's sitting at home waiting for him to come back with some money that she desperately needs to buy food and drugs.

[Tina]

The time that he told me he would be back, he didn't come back. I'm on crack cocaine now. So I began to call him and I'm like, where are you? He was like, well, I decided to go to Jersey.

[Anna Sinfield]

At this point, the argument doesn't seem like anything out of the ordinary for any normal couple. A last minute change of plans that creates tension, followed by a slew of angry texts that were probably taken in the worst way. Tina is hungry and withdrawing, stewing in her anger back at home. By the time Eli does come home with food for her, she's on edge and starving. She tears into the food.

[Tina]

He was like, damn, you hungry as hell, huh? Laughing. And I'm like, what's funny about that?

[Anna Sinfield]

The argument ends, and while Tina takes her leftovers into the kitchen, Eli drifts off to sleep in their bedroom. No big deal. But for Tina, something has switched. That throwaway laugh from Eli was just a mean joke, sure, but for Tina, it was the final Jenga block being pulled from a wonky insecure tower.

[Tina]

I went into a whole zone. I started thinking of my mother. I started thinking of my father. I started thinking of everything that I had endured in my life.

[Anna Sinfield]

All those familiar and corrosive feelings of anger, fear, abandonment, and betrayal rise up in her chest. She starts getting high in the kitchen. Her feelings about the earlier argument festering. All while images of her brutal life are flashing before her eyes.

[Tina]

The next thing you know, I'm over the stove, boiling hot grease.

[Anna Sinfield]

Tina is experiencing what would later be described as a drug induced psychosis. And it's going to drive her to do something really, really horrible. So feel free to Skip ahead about 3 1/2 minutes if you don't want to hear the details.

[Tina]

I'm looking at this grease boil and I'm still thinking of not just him per se, it was about everything in life. I'm back on drugs. I've disappointed so many people that don't know I'm back on drugs again. And as I'm leaving out of the kitchen with the boiling grease, I pick up a knife and I head towards our bedroom. I remember putting the pot down on that radiator, thinking to myself, like, I had two voices. One was saying, don't do this, this is so wrong. And another like, fuck that. Like, people keep playing you. How long are you going to be stupid? How long are you going to be a sucker? And I opened that door with that hot pot of grease and I went in and threw it on him while he was asleep.

[Anna Sinfield]

Boiling oil makes contact with Eli's skin, causing third degree burns. Panicking, he jumps up from the bed in the small bedroom. They start tussling with the knife still in Tina's hand. Tina's lost in a chaotic blur of drugs and fear and anger. She doesn't know what she's doing until she feels herself stab Eli in the stomach.

[Tina]

I pulled the knife out and he fell onto the bed. So he's just laying there. He says to me, he says, I love you. And I'm looking at him in this daze and I'm like, oh, now you love me? Now you love me. And I remember leaving out of that room, going back into the kitchen and continue getting high, getting high in the kitchen and continue getting high. I'm so high. And I remember the drugs eventually going low until they was gone. And I started coming to a little bit of reality all of a sudden. And he started conversating with me. He was like, if you just leave and call 911 for me, I won't tell him that you did this. I'll tell them somebody else did this. I picked up a trick. She hurt me or a friend. They did this, but I have to get help, Please. I have children and that's what did it for me. And I remember looking up at him because he was moaning and that's why I saw the damage that I had that time. And I was saying to myself, how did I get here? What the newspapers say that I was in that room with him for 36 hours. I don't know if it was that long, but I knew it was more than a day that we was like that in that room.

[Anna Sinfield]

Tina wasn't aware until after the incident, but she had stabbed Eli multiple times in the leg, in the hand, and in the stomach, piercing vital organs. Now, I just want to pause here for a moment and say I know that this will have been really difficult to listen to. Believe me, it's been pretty difficult to report on. If I'm honest. I don't enjoy raking over the lurid details of Tina's life or this incident. But considering Jailhouse Lawyer has really been about a woman who has always maintained her innocence, I think it's important to challenge ourselves with an even more complicated case with a woman who absolutely, without a shred of doubt, has committed a violent crime against a man who was not abusive towards her. In fact, in this moment, it's Tina who's the perpetrator of domestic violence. What should the system do with women like Tina who have experienced a lifetime of abuse, but who have also caused a lot of harm? I feel in my gut that there has to be some kind of consequences for something like this, for Tina, for Eli, and for the greater public. But when I try and come up with one perfect solution for everyone, I come up short. I think it comes down to thinking about what justice really looks like and whether our end goal is to help or if it's simply to punish. As the drugs are wearing off, Tina starts to really comprehend what she's done. With shaking hands, she calls the police and tells them what's happened. And she texts her sister saying, I'm.

[Tina]

Going away for a long time. This time.

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[Anna Sinfield]

When the police show up, they quickly notice Tina's psych medication on the dresser and the process of getting her into a secure hospital begins. She's assessed by doctors, interviewed by police officers the whole time. Tina remains steadfastly honest.

[Tina]

I was going to be willing and accepting of it. I was going to tell the truth of what happened. I went in with hours high and I committed the crime that I committed.

[Anna Sinfield]

She spends the next month or so in a secure psychiatric hospital on a course of various heavy medications.

[Tina]

As far as arraignment, meeting my public defender for the first time, I was so Drugged up. I was a little slower with my speech, my thought process, and everything was like, a little blurred.

[Anna Sinfield]

Finally, she's spat out into Rikers island jail, where she's eventually put into the intensive treatment unit. This is where they house people with complex mental health histories. And just like Kelly did, Tina starts opening up to the women around her.

[Tina]

Eventually, we all had conversations with each other. And yeah, majority of every woman that I talked to that was on that unit with us had been through some type of domestic violence abuse. We were all there for hurting a man that we was in a relationship with. Every single one of you, Every single one of us on this unit.

[Anna Sinfield]

One day, Tina is on the phone to her mother when her mom catches her by surprise.

[Tina]

She said, guess who came by my house? So I'm thinking she was going to say, my ex husband came by. So I'm like, who? Who came out of the house?

[Anna Sinfield]

It's Eli. He's alive and he's in her mother's house.

[Tina]

I'm confused. I'm so confused. I'm like, for what? Now I'm thinking, you know, you gonna get back at me and harm my family? She was like, no, he wanted to know, you know, where you at? And he said, he's gonna come see you. And I'm like, what?

[Anna Sinfield]

It's a lot to take in. Not only has Eli survived, but he's well enough to casually visit Tina's mother with no malice or anger.

[Tina]

By the time I hung up the phone with my mother, they said, you have a visit. I'm like, I have a visit now. My mother just told me this, but I'm still not thinking it's him. He's not coming to see me. So I get to the visiting floor.

[Anna Sinfield]

And it's him sitting behind the protective glass waiting to meet her, the man she essentially tortured and nearly killed.

[Tina]

I don't know what to say. I'm totally confused. Why are you here? And he's like, you know, I had to come see you. I want you to know that I forgive you and that I'm going to be here to support you through all of this. And I'm like, what? The visit ended with him saying, you know, do you need anything? I'll be back next week, and, you know, you can call me whenever you want to let me know if you need anything. And there really, I don't know, really was nothing behind it but forgiveness. But I really did not know how to take that at the time. I'm like, why would you want to forgive me for a situation such as.

[Anna Sinfield]

This, Eli actually becomes a huge advocate for Tina. He says he understands that she was high, experiencing a psychological break. It wasn't really her. Her public defender, a man named George dupountis, also has her back. George was actually the first person to suggest to Tina that there might be a connection between her crime and her past experiences. He then suggests that to the court too. This connection between the abuse she had suffered and her attack on Eli. This and the fact she pled guilty to attempted murder straight away means that her sentence is reduced from 25 to life down to 16. Tina says her goodbyes to the women on her Rikers unit and gets ready to face the years ahead at Bedford Hills Prison.

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[Anna Sinfield]

From the moment she arrives at Bedford Hills, Tina knew this was going to be a drastically different experience from her first incarceration. Back then she'd relished the break from responsibility and even enjoyed her time inside. But this time she's on a mission.

[Tina]

I was trying to understand me and how did I get to that point in my life?

[Anna Sinfield]

One of the first things to sort was getting visitation rights for Eli, because.

[Tina]

Automatically it was a restraining order issue for me not to be in contact with him. So he went to the courts and basically asked to be able to come see me. Then we started having visits and then.

[Anna Sinfield]

There'S a shitload of self work to do.

[Tina]

There was this program called Family Violence and I was like, oh, this might be, you know, a good fit for me and what I was trying to understand and I went in open. I'm the only one talking for a good two weeks. I'm just pouring my heart out and, you know, trying to get a better understanding. And from me talking, other people began to open up and talk.

[Anna Sinfield]

Tina puts in the hard graft like this for years, trying to unravel the knots of her lifelong traumas from the reality of what she did to Eli. When in around 2019, she hears about a new law called the DVSJA, the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act. You heard about it in Kelly's story. The law works to reduce the sentences of people whose experiences of domestic abuse have been shown to influence their crimes. It's clearly relevant to Tina's case. So she contacts her lawyer, who in turn puts her in touch with a woman named Kate, Kate Mogulescu, the lawyer that Tina introduced to Kelly in episode.

[Tina]

Seven, a lawyer slash professor at Brooklyn Law School. And I remember meeting her little short, curly black haired Jewish lady. Nobody really knows how to go about this new law. So she's discussing how I'm a good candidate because of all the abuse that I went through as a child.

[Anna Sinfield]

Kate and Tina get to work compiling a trove of documents and details about the abuse Tina had suffered. It's heavy, hard work Trawling through the worst moments of her life, Building the case one painful memory at a time, or for her application to be rejected.

[Tina]

The abuse wasn't substantial at the time of the crime, so I was denied a hearing. And I was hurt. It wasn't even about the freedom. I think I was more hurt because I felt like I wasn't being heard. I remember Kate saying to me, but we're not gonna give up. We're gonna try something else.

[Anna Sinfield]

Kate thinks that Tina could be eligible for clemency from the governor. Clemency basically means mercy. The idea is that the governor would look at the context of Tina's life, as well as the work she's done since, and decide if that 16 year sentence was really the right call. If the governor decides it's not that she deserves a little mercy, Tina could have her sentence changed or reduced, but she's not buying it.

[Tina]

I'm definitely not thinking I'm gonna get clemency. There's no way in the world, sorry to say, black women that was incarcerated Is not getting clemency from prison like the ones that we have heard was white and let alone a woman at all. Men get clemency. Women don't get clemency in the state of New York. That's just like a known fact.

[Anna Sinfield]

Despite this, Kate and Tina finish assembling the paperwork. They get a testimonial of support from Eli, and then they file the case. One morning, the officer on duty tells Tina to get ready because she's being called down to an area known as traffic. It's where the superintendent is posted, and it's also the area that you go for visitation.

[Tina]

I know I don't have a visit. So I'm like, what they want me for? So instantly I thought somebody died. Like, they're calling me down there to inform me that somebody passed away in my family.

[Anna Sinfield]

She's being told by the officer to hurry up and get ready. Somebody is coming to get her and escort her down there.

[Tina]

And I'm being escorted. Somebody's dead. I asked him, what am I going down here for? He was like, I don't know. They just told me to bring you down there.

[Anna Sinfield]

As soon as she walks through the door and into traffic, she notices the superintendent standing there, Tall Scary lady. Tina's ushered into a room with a box of tissues sitting on the table.

[Tina]

Yup, somebody's dead. Who is it?

[Anna Sinfield]

The superintendent says nothing, and they sit down. Tina's mind is running through every awful possibility. The superintendent looks up at her.

[Tina]

She's like, I just want to say congratulations to you. Soon as she said that, I knew, and I just started crying.

[Anna Sinfield]

Governor Hochul has granted Tina clemency.

[Tina]

And I was like, she did it. She did it. And she was like, who did it? I'm like, my lawyer. I'm like, my lawyer. She did it.

[Anna Sinfield]

After seven and a half years behind bars, years of reflecting on the terrible crimes she committed and the terrible crimes that were committed against her, Tina is free.

[Tina]

As I was walking up the hill with the officer with my good news, I started thinking of all the other women here who had been fighting, who had been fighting before me, the ones who deserved it more than me, the ones that were 70 and 80 years old. I don't know, I just felt like there was so many other people that should be in my shoes that day.

[Anna Sinfield]

These days, Tina is out and sober, with a job and a roof over her head. But she never stopped thinking about those women left inside. And now she spends her time fighting for them. She joined the organization founded by her lawyer, Kate. It's called sjp, the Survivors Justice Project. They focus on using the DVSJA to get survivors out of prison through reduced sentences.

[Tina]

SJP is basically a group of formerly incarcerated women that sits on a board and give their experiences to make the law better than what it is. And the biggest thing with the law that needs to be changed is how they look at substantial.

[Anna Sinfield]

Tina's talking about what counts as substantial abuse in the eyes of the law.

[Tina]

At the time of my crime, my abuse was substantial. But the court don't see it as we see it, because I walked my whole life with scars on my body and my emotions of all that happened to me throughout my life. So it was substantial at the time of my crime. And that's what we're trying to make them understand. A different way of how to look at this law so other women who are in the same situation can come home earlier because they're still victims, and the courts don't see it as that.

[Anna Sinfield]

I'm sure there were many people who read the headlines about Tina's crime when it first happened, people who are probably shocked that she's free just eight years later. But ask yourself this. If Tina was still in prison today, what good would it do. She's long since taken full accountability for what she did. She spent years behind bars painstakingly re examining her past and she's even got the forgiveness and support of the person she hurt. Tina did something terrible and she's not afraid to own that. But that doesn't take away from the fact that she's also a victim and a survivor. I keep coming back to that question I asked earlier. Is the goal to help or punish? In my mind, our social and legal structures should help citizens be the best they can be. Tina has already been let down by those systems time and time again. Locking her up will not break that cycle. So what should we do with women like Tina instead? Next week I ask an expert. Just that we have told people that justice is punishment. We are a retributive people and it's what we've been taught and I don't want to live in that kind of society. And I eat some humble pie. Yeah, I was listening to the first season and was yelling at the at the radio. I liked the idea of you yelling at the radio at the work that I did. I think that's great. The Girlfriend's Jailhouse Lawyer is produced by Novel for I Heart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit Novel Audio. The show is hosted by me, Anna Sinfield and is written and produced by me and Lee Meyer, with additional production from Jake Otajevic and Michael Jinno. Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr. The editors are Georgia Moody and me, Anna Sinfield. Production management from Cherie Houston, Jo Savage and Charlotte Wolf. Our fact checker is Danya Suleiman. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander. Music supervision by me, Anna Sinfield, Lee Meyer and Nicholas Alexander. Original music composed by Nicholas Alexander, Daniel Kempson and Louisa Gerstein. Story development by Nell Gray Andrews and Willard Foxton. Creative director of Novel. Max o' Brien and Craig Strachan are our executive producers for Novel and Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etor are the executive producers for iHeart podcasts and the marketing lead is Alison Cantor. Thanks also to Carrie Lieberman and the whole team at wme.

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Open grow today at paypalopen.com loans subject to approval in available locations. Witness the new season of Reasonable Doubt, Streaming on Hulu September 18th. LA's most successful attorney, Jack Stewart, defends a young actor accused of murder. Follow Emayatti Coronaldi, Morris Chestnut, Joseph Sikora and guest stars Kash Doll and Lori Harvey as they face off in the year's most sensational trial in the pursuit of justice. Every move counts. Reasonable Doubt Season 3 is streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney September 18th. Hulu on Disney for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. This is an I Heart podcast.