Patty Prewitt spent 38 years in Missouri prisons for the 1984 murder of her husband, a crime she has always maintained she did not commit.
Then, on Dec. 20, 2024, she was released from prison when then-Missouri Gov. Mike Parson commuted her sentence, which had been 50 years without parole.
“Jane, my oldest daughter, was visiting me, and they called us out and said, 'You're leaving in the next two hours,’” Prewitt told KCUR’s Up To Date.
Legal experts were working on seeking her exoneration right up until the day the clemency order came. The commuted sentence for Prewitt does not pardon her of the murder conviction, but it does grant her release on parole.
During her nearly 40 years behind bars, Prewitt wrote letters to friends, family and journalists, chronicling everything from deplorable prison conditions to the pain of missing her children.
And, surprisingly enough, her correspondence included glimpses of connection, humor and hope. Many of those letters are now collected in a new book, “Trying to Catch Lightning in a Jar: Letters from Prison.”
“I just kept hope every day. I woke up thinking today might be the day, and I have children and grandchildren, and I had parents, I couldn't disappoint anybody. I couldn't give up,” Prewitt said.
Prewitt will be speaking and signing books at an event at the Screenland Armour Theatre in North Kansas City on Wednesday, June 4, 2025.
- Patty Prewitt
- Sean O’Brien, distinguished teaching professor at the UMKC School of Law
