by Douglas Ankney

"I bled every day for five years until I finally had a hysterectomy,” said Lisa Rae Wright, describing her injuries after her husband had repeatedly punched her in the stomach during her pregnancy with their son.

In 2024, the Oklahoma Survivors’ Act (OSA) was signed into law. The purpose of the OSA is to allow victims of sexual or domestic abuse to petition for reduced sentences if the abuse they suffered was a major factor in their crime. However, as of February 22, 2026, only Wright (quoted above) has been granted relief under the OSA while judges have denied multiple petitions from other prisoners. This indicates that Oklahoma’s judges don’t believe that rape and other violence perpetrated against these prisoners is sufficient reason to reduce their sentences.

The OSA was modeled after New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, “a law empowering judges to reduce sentences when they found that abuse had been a ‘significant contributing factor’ to a defendant’s crime.” Statistical evidence demonstrates there is a direct correlation between domestic violence and crimes committed by victims of that violence. For example, Oklahoma consistently ranks among the states with the highest rates of domestic violence against females and it also has one of the highest rates of female imprisonment. The OSA is intended to provide both prospective and retroactive relief.

Prospectively, the OSA provides that: “During a hearing to sentence a person or accept a plea of guilty for a person who is a survivor of domestic violence and has been charged with a crime, the court shall consider as a mitigating factor that the person has been abused physically, sexually, or psychologically by the person’s sexual partner, family member or member of the household, the trafficker of the person, or other individual who used the person for financial gain,” per OSA §§ 3(A)(1)&(2).

Under OSA §3(C), if the court finds that a person was abused as defined in OSA §§ 3(A)(1)&(2) and finds that abuse “was a substantial contributing factor in causing the defendant to commit the offense or to the defendant’s criminal behavior” then “the court shall depart from the applicable sentence to the ranges provided” in OSA §§ C(1)-(6).

Significantly, “[s]entences of life without the possibility of parole shall be reduced to thirty (30) years or less”; “Sentences of life with the possibility of parole shall be reduced to twenty-five (25) years or less.”; “Sentences of thirty (30) years or more shall be reduced to twenty (20) years or less”; “[s]entences of twenty (20) years or more shall be reduced to fifteen (15) years or less”; “Sentences of fifteen (15) years or more shall be reduced to seven and one-half (71⁄2) years or less”; and “[s]entences of eight (8) years or more shall be reduced to five (5) years or less.”

However, any offense for which a person was sentenced to death or any offense that would require registration as a sex offender (including attempts and conspiracies to commit any such offense) are excluded from eligibility. The OSA provides for retroactive relief in § 4(A): “Where a court has imposed a criminal judgment and sentence upon a defendant other than for an offense described in [§ 3D] of this act and the defendant is serving the sentence in the custody of the Department of Corrections, the court shall impose a new, lesser sentence following a hearing if the court determines” that the person was abused as defined in OSA § 3(A)(1)&(2) and finds that the “abuse was a significant contributing factor in causing the defendant to commit the offense for which he or she is presently in custody or to the defendant’s criminal behavior.”

“I lost control. I could not handle it anymore, and I killed her,” said Joshua Thomas Bryant, an Oklahoma teenager sentenced to 40 years for killing his stepmother who had sexually abused him for years. Unfortunately, and somewhat unsurprisingly, petitions filed by eligible prisoners under the OSA are subject to the same pitfall as those filed under New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act.

Alexander Harrington, a law professor at the University of Buffalo, authored a 2025 article in The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology in which he “found that whether a defendant had her sentence reduced or not largely depended on the local district attorney.” In New York, the pattern is that judges granted applications for resentencing when prosecutors supported it. But “[w]hen prosecutors opposed an application, only a fraction succeeded.” Harrington wrote: “In some jurisdictions, the D.A.’s office has served almost entirely to obstruct the path to relief.”

As PLN has often reported, the almost unchecked power of prosecutors is the primary cause of injustices in America’s criminal legal system and the complete power imbalance begins with which crimes are charged and continues into the plea bargain/trial, sentencing, and post-conviction phases. Apparently, petitions seeking sentence reductions based on rape and other violence perpetrated against defendants are likewise smashed with the prosecution’s hammer.

True to form, Tulsa County district attorney Steve Kunzweiller opposed the OSA before it was signed to law. In 2024, Kunzweiller wrote in an email to a legislator that the OSA “presents a risk to public safety.” He then alleged: “The Bever brothers, who slaughtered their family in Broken Arrow, would be eligible for sentence modification under this bill in its present form.” But the Bever brothers (who had killed their parents and three younger siblings in 2015) were ineligible as there was no documentary evidence they had been abused.

The newly divorced April Wilkins was a successful 25-year-old in 1995, operating her own prosthetics business in Tulsa when she began dating Terry Carlton. Carlton, the “handsome and magnetic” son of a prominent auto dealer, flew them first class to Dallas and hired a chauffeured limousine for their first date. In just two months, Carlton slipped a $25,000 engagement ring on Wilkins’s finger when he proposed to her on Christmas Eve. She said “yes,” unaware at the time of Carlton’s drug problem and history of violence against women (two of his previous girlfriends had reported his abuse to police—and one secured a protective order against him).

Just four months later, Carlton grabbed Wilkins by the throat during an argument. Over the next two years of their on-again-off-again relationship, Wilkins was forced to call 911 at least ten times, pleading for help. She received medical treatment for injuries sustained during multiple violent assaults, including rape. Three emergency protective orders were granted to her against Carlton. The evidence was documented by police reports, medical records, and trial testimony. A neighbor testified to seeing Carlton chase the screaming Wilkins down the driveway, grab her by the hair, and drag her back inside the home. A doctor who lived across the street from Carlton “discovered Wilkins in her car, bleeding, after Carlton smashed her driver-side window and grabbed her keys so she couldn’t leave.”

Yet Carlton, whose family wielded influence, seemed untouchable and police, when called, arrived feeling “put out, impatient, and in a hurry.” Carlton managed to evade arrest on all but one occasion. Even though he was caught red handed at Wilkins’s home in February 1998 with a loaded 9mm pistol and a stun gun, he was cited only with a misdemeanor weapons violation (instead of the felonies for assault and stalking). And even then, after he skipped his court date, the Tulsa police never served the warrant that ensued.

Carlton’s unrelenting harassment took its toll on Wilkins. He had introduced her to cocaine and then to using methamphetamine intravenously. Her drug dependence increased as her psychological stability decreased. Twice she was involuntarily committed to psychiatric hospitals. She lost her business, her family, and her friends. One early morning in April 1998, Wilkins arrived at Carlton’s residence to beg him to leave her alone for good.

Instead, Carlton wanted sex. Wilkins refused. Carlton raped her and threatened to kill her. Wilkins managed to grab Carlton’s .22 pistol and shot him eight times, killing him. At Wilkins’s 1999 trial on charges that included first degree murder, Tulsa District Attorney Tim Harris said to the jury: “When in trouble, cry rape.” Even though a sexual assault exam of Wilkins on the morning of the killing had shown vaginal tearing, Harris portrayed the 107-pound Wilkins as the “lying, manipulative aggressor.” Then, to add insult to the failure of Tulsa police to arrest Carlton, Harris told the jury: “If April Wilkins had really been serious about her fear of Terry Carlton, she could have allowed the system to come to her aid.”

The jury convicted Wilkins and she was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. In 2015, Harris was succeeded by Kunzweiler. Kunzweiller took it upon himself to oppose Wilkins’s release on parole, writing to the parole board that “[Wilkins] presents a risk to the safety of the public.” After Wilkins petitioned for relief under the OSA, Kunzweiller filed repeated motions that delayed her hearing for almost a year. Finally, at the September 2025 hearing on her petition, Kunzweiller and his assistant prosecutor Meghan Hilborn, vigorously opposed any modification to Wilkins’s sentence. Judge David Guten heard the evidence, most of which was recounted above. However, one piece of evidence not heard at Wilkins’s trial was presented at the hearing by U.S. District Judge Claire Eagan.

In 1996, while Eagan was a lawyer in private practice, Wilkins had showed up at Eagan’s office with two black eyes and bruises on her arms and face. Wilkins sought and received Eagan’s help in obtaining a protective order against Carlton. Wilkins had also brought a tape recording to Eagan of a phone call wherein Carlton had “angrily admitted to raping, beating and choking [Wilkins], while blaming her for provoking him.” The recording was played for Guten at the hearing. Yet, in spite of the recording, the police reports, the protective orders, the witness testimony, and the medical records documenting the abhorrent violence perpetrated on Wilkins by Carlton, Guten denied Wilkins’s petition.

Unable to outright deny the evidence, Guten said: “There was more than sufficient evidence that there was violence in this relationship.” But he “concluded” that Wilkins had failed to show “by clear and convincing evidence” that the abuse she suffered “substantially contributed to the crime itself.” The same pattern in New York is appearing in Oklahoma.

Norma Jane Lumpkin has served over 40 years on a life sentence for the bludgeoning death of her abusive husband. Tyesha Long, only 27 years old, is serving a 27-year sentence for the shooting death of her abusive boyfriend. Long was 17 years old when a 50-something Ray Brown began pursuing her. Brown had several protective orders against him from multiple women. The first time Brown was violent with Long, he sucker-punched her in the mouth. He continued with stalking her, choking her, threatening her life, once he even shoved her down a flight of stairs, causing Long to suffer a miscarriage. During one argument, Brown attempted to strangle Long again. Pulling her gun, she shot him.

Long’s OSA petition was denied in October 2025, along with Lumpkin’s, after vehement opposition from prosecutors. Of the 33 OSA petitions filed so far, 12 are from men. But only Wright’s was granted.  

Source: ProPublica

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