Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

Patricia Wright is 60 years old, legally blind and wheelchair-bound. She also has Stage 4 cancer, which has spread to her breasts and to her brain. In November 2011, doctors removed one of three tumors from her brainstem and placed a steel plate in her head. It was Wright's seventh surgery that year alone.

If Wright were anyone else, she would go home and recuperate among family and loved ones. But she is in prison, having been sentenced to life without parole in 1997. Instead of having a loved one bring her home, Wright was handcuffed, shackled and returned to the skilled nursing facility (SNF) at the Central California Women's Facility prison.

If the idea of battling cancer behind bars is not appalling enough, Wright never should have been convicted and incarcerated. The San Francisco Bayview reports that when Wright's former husband was found dead in 1981, she was not a suspect. However, in 1995, her brother Larry, who was facing a ten-year sentence in a maximum-security prison for child abuse, told police that Wright was responsible for the murder. In exchange, his sentence was reduced to two years imprisonment with five years of parole. After his release from prison in 2000, Larry wrote a detailed letter stating that he had lied about his sister's involvement in the death of her husband. The absence of DNA evidence linking Wright to the killing has led the Innocence Project in New York City to take on her case.

In September 2010, California passed Senate Bill 1399, a medical parole process to reduce the cost of expensive medical care and around-the-clock armed guards for incarcerated people who are permanently medically incapacitated. However, people sentenced to death or to life without the possibility of parole remain ineligible for medical parole. Thus, as Wright's son Alfey Ramdhan pointed out in an appeal in the San Francisco Bay View, her only chance to spend her remaining days with her family is if Gov. Jerry Brown grants her executive clemency or compassionate release.

However, Wright has two prior felonies from 15 years earlier when Ramdhan, then age 7, stole two 99-cent toys and a hand towel from an open house. Although the items stolen were valued under $400, these two actions were classified as felonies. Given that Wright's conviction in her ex-husband's death is considered a third strike under California's three-strikes legislation, Brown's office has been reluctant to grant her clemency.