This hour, the story of how an event affected one woman, her family and the criminal justice system.

A Life Sentence: Victims, Offenders, Justice and My Mother
by Samantha Broun and Jay Allison for Atlantic Public Media and Transom.org
In 1994, Sam Broun's mother, Jeremy Brown, was the victim of a violent crime. She was 55 years old and living alone. A stranger came into her backyard, attacked her from behind and five hours later, he left her lying on her bed — hands and feet bound with tape. Alive. She survived. This is a story of how the system failed and how that crime launched and destroyed political careers. It's also a story about family — both the victims and the assailants — and how thousands of prisoners' hopes for a second chance were lost.

This piece was made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts with special thanks to Thanks to Rob Rosenthal, Melissa Allison, Sydney Lewis, Viki Merrick, public radio station WCAI and Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole... For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy