They Called Her 'Law Library.' She Never Went to Law School

How Kelly Harnett helped free others, and then herself
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 14, 2023 9:30 AM CST
They Called Her Law Library. She Never Went to Law School
Stock photo.   (Getty Images/tapui)

"She's a superb legal mind," an attorney says of Kelly Harnett. That's not thanks to any law school. Hartnett earned the nicknames "Law Library" and "Esquire" while incarcerated at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester, New York. In 2015 she began serving 17 years to life there for the murder of a man in a Queens park. Her abusive boyfriend had choked the man to death while threatening to kill a screaming Harnett next. In a lengthy piece for New York Magazine, Justine van der Leun manages to artfully do three things: recount how Harnett dove deep into the prison's law library and managed to file successful motions for a number of female prisoners; follow Harnett's own path toward release; and explain what the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA), made law in the state in 2019, has and has not facilitated.

The DVSJA gives judges leeway in sentencing domestic violence survivors who are convicted of crimes as a result of abuse—while also giving those already incarcerated the chance to apply for resentencing. "It's not unusual for women to be held responsible for crimes that are committed by their intimate partners if they can be placed at the scene in any way," one law professor tells van der Leun. Indeed, one inmate whom van der Leun corresponded with says her partner forced her to drive him to burglary targets, kicking and hitting her if she tried to refuse. During one run he killed someone as she sat in the car; she got 50 years. But the DVSJA doesn't always entirely absolve survivors; van der Leun recounts cases where two women who killed their abusers saw their sentences lessened to five and 7.5 years, respectively. (Read the full story for much more on Harnett's case and her eventual May 2022 release from prison.)

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