A new Oklahoma law designed to give domestic violence survivors serving long prison sentences a second chance at freedom is colliding with the realities of the criminal legal system, where prosecutors and courts remain reluctant to revisit violent crime cases even when abuse played a central role.
In February, investigative journalist Pamela Colloff published The Victims Who Fought Back in ProPublica and The New York Times, examining the Oklahoma Survivors Act and the difficult path facing incarcerated survivors seeking relief under the law. The Davis Vanguard spoke with Colloff about her reporting and what she witnessed inside courtrooms as survivors tried to use the new statute to revisit decades-old convictions.
Colloff, a veteran reporter who has covered criminal justice for nearly three decades, said the story began when she learned about a surprising legislative development in a neighboring state.
“I live in Texas and I’ve been reporting on criminal justice here for almost 30 years,” she said. “I learned in 2025 that a law had just passed in Oklahoma called the Oklahoma Survivors Act.”
The law was intended to address a long-standing problem in the criminal legal system: victims of domestic violence who end up serving extremely long sentences for crimes tied to their abuse. Under the statute, incarcerated survivors can seek a reduced sentence if they can demonstrate that the abuse they endured was a significant contributing factor in their crime.
“What that law did or tried to do or hoped to do was to help people who were victims of domestic violence, who were incarcerated for crimes that stemmed from that abuse,” Colloff explained.
The legislation acknowledges that domestic violence can profoundly shape behavior, particularly in cases where survivors harm or kill their abusers, commit crimes under duress, or are punished for failing to protect children from abusive partners.
“The idea was that the abuse should be a mitigating factor and that people who were serving these really, really long sentences often for killing their abusers… that we should go back and reconsider those sentences,” Colloff said.
The law passed during a period of growing national attention to what advocates describe as “criminalized survivors” — people whose involvement in the legal system cannot be separated from the violence they experienced.
When Colloff began reporting the story, the law appeared to offer a rare example of reform translating directly into freedom.
“Last January, the first person was freed under the Oklahoma Survivors Act, Lisa Moss,” she said.
Moss had spent more than three decades in prison for her involvement in the murder of her husband, who had been abusive. Her conviction remained intact, but the court reconsidered the sentence in light of the abuse she endured.
“This was not an exoneration case. I mean, her guilty verdict stands. This was about sentencing,” Colloff said.
For Colloff, Moss’s release suggested the possibility of a different kind of criminal justice story — one where reform was actually working.
“I thought that maybe I was going to be writing one of the rare criminal justice stories where you see reform in action, you really see it working,” she said.
But when she traveled to Oklahoma to observe hearings involving other incarcerated survivors, the reality proved far more complicated.
“I went and attended all these different re-sentencing hearings through the summer and early fall, and it played out very differently than I thought,” she said.
Despite dozens of petitions filed under the new law, Moss remains the only person released so far.
“Lisa Moss is still the only person to have been released under the Oklahoma Survivors Act,” Colloff said.
Many of the survivors she observed in court were elderly women who had spent decades behind bars.
One of them was Norma Jane Lumpkin, who had been incarcerated since 1981.
“When you see the picture, she’s an old woman. There’s no other way to put it. She’s elderly,” Colloff said.
Lumpkin ultimately did not win resentencing under the law.
Cases like hers raise difficult questions about justice, mercy and accountability in cases involving violence.
“These are not exonerations, these are not innocence cases, and these are not non-violent felonies,” Colloff said. “These are violent felony cases.”
She said the heart of the issue involves society’s willingness to reconsider long sentences when abuse played a major role.
“What is our capacity for mercy?” Colloff asked. “What is our capacity for shaving a few years off of the sentence if we have these mitigating factors of abuse versus justice for the victim, justice for the victim’s family?”
One major barrier to relief has been opposition from local prosecutors.
Some district attorneys argue that allowing survivors to revisit their sentences could open the door to false claims of abuse.
“There’s a very real and valid concern that if you set up this kind of off-ramp for people serving long sentences, that you’re then going to have to deal with a lot of bad faith claims,” Colloff said.
Because of those concerns, lawmakers wrote the statute narrowly. Survivors must provide documentary evidence or other corroboration of abuse, and judges must determine that the abuse was a “substantial contributing factor” in the crime.
Even with those safeguards, prosecutors have aggressively challenged many petitions.
Colloff described courtroom scenes in which survivors faced hours of cross-examination about their abuse.
“I was shocked at the level of skepticism,” she said.
In one case, a survivor remained on the stand for five hours as prosecutors dissected small inconsistencies in her testimony.
“There was this parsing of the abuse that really made everyone who took the stand in these hearings look extremely unreliable,” Colloff said.
That strategy can be particularly damaging in cases involving trauma.
Research shows that trauma can disrupt memory and affect how survivors recall events.
“What do we know about trauma? We know that it impacts memory dramatically and interrupts sort of the way that memory is normally recorded,” Colloff said.
For Colloff, the hearings revealed deeper structural problems within the criminal legal system.
“I was struck again as I always am with anything in the realm of domestic violence and how incredibly complicated these relationships are,” she said.
Courts often struggle with cases that do not fit simple narratives of victim and perpetrator.
“Our system has a lot of trouble… when it’s not a black and white case,” Colloff said.
The problem is particularly acute when survivors themselves become violent.
“It’s very, very hard for the courts to see you with that nuance,” she said.
Legal scholars sometimes describe such defendants as “imperfect victims,” meaning their lives do not match society’s expectations of innocence or respectability.
“Maybe you had a drug problem, maybe you’re not white, maybe you’re not middle class, maybe you’re not well educated,” Colloff said.
Those factors can shape how juries and judges interpret a case.
Another challenge is the lack of resources available to many defendants.
“I think it’s a lot of different things,” Colloff said, noting that many cases involve “an overworked public defender who often doesn’t have the funds… to hire a terrific expert witness to talk about trauma.”
Without expert testimony explaining the psychological effects of abuse, juries may struggle to understand why a survivor acted the way they did.
The Oklahoma Survivors Act also highlights a broader national debate about sentencing reform.
Colloff believes laws like this may represent the beginning of a larger conversation about extremely long prison terms.
“These types of cases are sort of the tip of the spear for a larger movement to try to rethink some of these really punishing sentences,” she said.
Advocates argue that elderly prisoners and survivors of abuse pose little risk to public safety and deserve a second look.
But Colloff’s reporting suggests that changing the law is only the first step.
Even after legislatures enact reforms, the courtroom dynamics of criminal prosecution remain powerful.
“Even where you see these laws getting passed, the execution of it in the courtroom is going to be very unevenly distributed,” she said.
For now, Moss’s release remains the lone example of the law working as intended.
For the many other survivors still incarcerated, the promise of the Oklahoma Survivors Act remains uncertain.
Follow the Vanguard on Social Media – X, Instagram and Facebook. Subscribe the Vanguard News letters. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit davisvanguard.org/donate or give directly through ActBlue. Your support will ensure that the vital work of the Vanguard continues.
