She lost her son, and then the state told her she had killed him, and then it put her in a cell to die for it. Her nine-month-old son stopped breathing. She ran to a neighbour, tried CPR the way she had seen it done, and drove him to the hospital. He died. Mississippi charged her with his murder and sentenced her to death. She was eighteen. Sabrina Butler. The bruising on the baby's body was from her attempts to resuscitate him. The prosecution presented it as a beating. No one told her she had the right to remain silent in any way she understood. She gave a statement trying to explain what she had done, and it was used against her. Her trial lasted a matter of days. The jury took less than an hour. She was sent to death row at nineteen, pregnant with her second child, and gave birth in custody. The Mississippi Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 1992. At the retrial in 1995, medical evidence showed the child had died of a kidney condition — a documented illness, not an injury. She was acquitted in about twenty minutes. Sabrina Butler is the first woman in the United States ever exonerated from death row. Mississippi has never compensated her. She now speaks publicly against the death penalty. She has said the hardest part was never the cell. It was that for five years nobody would let her grieve. Sabrina Butler’s case is the kind of buried injustice that helped inspire our Ebook, 150 Crimes Against Black America They Never Answered For—because some of our stories leave questions that still deserve answers. Support us savvypurchase.samcart.com/pr…