Cyntoia Brown will be released from prison after spending more than half of her life behind bars.
What We Know:
- She will be released to parole supervision on August 7, according to former Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, who granted her clemency earlier in the year. Additionally, she will stay on parole for 10 years.
- Brown was only 16 in 2004 when she was arrested and charged for the murder of 43-year-old Johnny Allen, a man who paid to have sex with her. Brown was tried as an adult and sentenced to life in prison.
- The 31-year-old used her time in prison to transform herself. “She is [sic] light years today, as a woman, different from the traumatized 16-year-old that she was,” Derri Smith, founder and CEO of non-profit End Slavery Tennessee, said last January. “She’s mentoring … troubled youth, working on her college degree, she is planning a nonprofit so she can help other young people,” she added.
- Brown received an Associate Degree from Lipscomb University in 2015 and obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in the Tennessee Prison for Women in May, according to The Tennessean.
Last month, Netflix acquired the rights to her story of incarceration and her fight for freedom. The feature will draw from the 2011 documentary Me Facing Life: Cyntoia’s Story directed and produced by Daniel H. Birman.
