NEW ORLEANS — A Louisiana woman is opening up about what it is like to serve more than 30 years behind bars for a conviction by a non-unanimous jury.
Edna Gibson was convicted in the 1980s of second-degree murder after she stabbed her husband, in what lawyers argued was self-defense.
A 10-2 split jury sentenced her to life in prison, but now Gibson is out on parole after Gov. John Bel Edwards recently commuted her sentence.
“On that final day, I didn’t want to believe it until I was in the car, leaving,” said Gibson in an interview with WWL-TV’s Paul Dudley. “I don’t know. It was unreal because I had been waiting so long.”
It did -- in fact-- take a long time to get to this moment.
A victim of domestic violence, Gibson was sentenced to life for stabbing Louis Gibson in September 1986 after he allegedly hit her when they were leaving a bar in Kenner. According to court records, Gibson testified that she had armed herself on the night of the stabbing because she and her husband were involved in a fight earlier in the day in which she had to hit him with a lamp to keep him from choking her.
Gibson told Dudley the abuse she endured for years was all she knew.
“Everybody I knew had an altercation with their spouse,” Gibson said. “If you were not fighting every day, it wasn’t love. That’s just how I saw it at the time but once I was removed from that environment, I saw that it wasn’t right. If someone really loves you, they aren’t going to destroy you.”
In trial -- Gibson’s self-defense claim proved unsuccessful. A non-unanimous jury sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“When you heard that verdict, do you remember what it felt like?,” asked Dudley.
“Doom. That was it. I would never see the light of day again," Gibson said.
But that wasn’t the case. After years of fighting, Gibson’s sentence was commuted by Gov. Edwards, making her eligible for parole.
The Promise of Justice Initiative, a New Orleans based nonprofit that works to create positive change for people in the criminal justice system, represented Gibson at the hearing. The group has long argued Louisiana's former non-unanimous jury system was a result of racist laws designed to silence Black jurors. Gibson knows race was more than just a small part of her trial.
“I believe they didn’t take me seriously because I was Black and I was a woman and I was young and ignorant,” Gibson said. “This was my life, and you gave me a life sentence because 10 said yes and 2 said no.”
Louisiana voted to change the law in 2018 and eventually The United States Supreme Court deemed convictions by non-unanimous juries unconstitutional.
“How do you feel now knowing so much for your life was spent behind bars because of an unjust system?” asked Dudley.
“Well, it doesn't make a difference how I feel about it now,” Gibson said. “It’s about forgiveness, you got to learn to forgive. I can’t get anything back for what happened.”
Despite the change in law, the Promise of Justice Initiative says there are still 1,500 people fighting for freedom from convictions by non-unanimous juries. It took resilience and determination for Gibson not to give up hope for those 34 years, but she says more than anything else it took faith.
“I didn’t get what I wanted when they convicted me, but I didn’t give up on God and he didn’t give up on me,” Gibson said.
During her time in prison, Gibson took advantage of several educational programs.
She is now working as a paralegal.
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