Oklahoma is finally trying to cut prison time for abused moms

A year and a half after Mother Jones exposed how Oklahoma courts were imprisoning mothers for longer than their abusers, state lawmakers passed a bill that could allow some of those mothers’ sentences to be shortened. But this week, Gov. Kevin Stitt vetoed the legislation. In an award-winning investigation in 2022, I told the story of Kerry King, a mom in Tulsa who got 30 years in prison under the state’s “failure to protect” law because she couldn’t stop her abusive boyfriend from beating her 4-year-old daughter. He received significantly...