NEW ORLEANS — This week, a Webster Parish woman walked out of the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women on probation after serving 13-and-a-half years for killing her abusive boyfriend.
Candice Malone, 34, is just one of 21 women a WWL-TV investigation identified two years ago who were serving life sentences in prison for defending themselves against domestic partners they say were abusive.
Last February, the Domestic Violence Law Clinic at Tulane University received a $2 million anonymous donation to expand its work getting domestic violence survivors in prison a second chance. Now the group has a team of lawyers, staff and an investigator working to breathe new life into the cases of women lifers who are victims of abuse themselves.
Candice Malone
At 34 years old, Candice Malone has lived two lifetimes. Coming out of high school, she received a TOPS scholarship to attend LSU Shreveport for free, but she later transferred to Grambling State University after having difficulty balancing life and her studies to continue working toward a nursing degree.
She wasn’t even 21 and she had started working full-time jobs to support herself and pay her way through college.
“I was working a full-time job at Conagra's chicken plant and I was going to school full time. So, it was a major struggle that really put me down in a depression,” Malone said in her first-ever interview with WWL-TV’s Katie Moore Friday.
That's around the time she met Terrance Henderson. She thought he would be her emotional savior, providing support and love during a difficult time. But their relationship went downhill fast into a dark hole of abuse and violence.
One time Malone said he cut her, and she called police.
“I’d taken all the knives and I actually went and locked myself in the car and I waited for the police to arrive. And that is where I was when the police arrived. And I filed a report that day and they informed me that I could file a restraining order, but it would cost me $100,” Malone said.
It was $100 the struggling college student didn't have.
By March of her junior year, Malone had a cigarette burn on her shoulder, scissor marks on her neck, grip bruises, she says, from his hands, on her elbow. The injuries were all spelled out in court records and at the trial.
The bruises were reminders of the last time they would ever have a fight, a violent 24 hours that started when she said he couldn't use her car because she didn't have the money to spend on gas.
“I just remember feeling like I just can't take this anymore. So, I just, I laid there. I didn't fight back anymore. And I just built up my strength and I finally raised up and I pushed him off me and I had actually grabbed the gun and I hit him with it,” Malone recalled.
Prosecutors would later use that against her—the fact that she had hit him with a gun. The next morning, when he got angry again, she grabbed his gun and pointed it at him.
“But then, all of a sudden, he moved toward me. And at that point I didn't realize what had happened. I didn't hear the gunshot or anything, I just saw him fall on the floor,” she said.
Malone was charged with second-degree murder and said as she prepared for final exams in college while standing trial, “I thought that the jury would see that that I was actually the victim in that situation. So, I didn't hesitate to go on the stand and speak for myself. But a lot of the things that I said were misconstrued in court.”
Ten jurors found her guilty and sent her to prison for life.
“I’ll never forget the face of the two people that said no. They voted no to find me not guilty. And it was just this look of devastation on their faces,” Malone said.
She never heard from them again, but that moment will stay with her for the rest of her life.
She went from college student to convict in an instant, she says, for killing an abusive partner in self-defense.
Malone was not alone.
When she went to prison to begin her life sentence at just 21 years old, Malone says she made some good friends who were in a similar situation — serving long or life sentences for fighting back against an abusive domestic partner.
“Catina Curley actually was one of my best friends while I was there. And we used to always talk about getting out of prison and the things that we would do together once we got out. So, between the two of us, it kept us going,” Malone said.
Catina Curley's suffering would ultimately lead to a chance at freedom for many of the women in her shoes. The Louisiana Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in Curley's case in 2018 that allows domestic violence survivors to seek a new trial if experts aren't called to testify about battered women's syndrome. It's the idea that abuse victims have a reasonable fear that their life is in danger because of past abuse.
“She got out, in large part due to the Curley decision, which held that in situations where a survivor of intimate partner violence kills her abuser, it's essential for defense attorneys to consult with an expert on intimate partner violence,” said her attorney Stas Moroz, Malone’s attorney.
Moroz works with a group of Tulane Law professors and staff dedicated to finding justice for abuse victims serving life sentences for standing up to their abusers in self-defense. It’s called the Women’s Prison Project.
A 2018 WWL-TV investigation revealed 21 women out of more than 100 serving life sentences in Louisiana were all convicted for killing abusive domestic partners. Candice Malone was one of them.
In February 2020, the Tulane Law Clinic and Tulane Domestic Violence Clinic received an anonymous $2 million donation to help find the survivors in Louisiana’s prisons and get them a renewed chance to make their case in court.
After sending applications to the prison, more than 100 women have applied to the Women’s Prison Project for help with representation. The team has already identified and helped to free two additional women who were not on WWL-TV’s original list of abuse survivors: Beatrice Jones and Betty Jean Broaden. They also helped keep another from facing criminal charges before her case got that far.
Betty Jean Broaden
Betty Jean Broaden’s case was different. Her abuser was an acquaintance who sexually assaulted her repeatedly at gunpoint in her own home. She ultimately turned the gun on him.
Just last week, the Women’s Prison Project worked with Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams to vacate the second-degree murder conviction of Broaden. She had served 38 years of a life-without-parole sentence.
Even though Louisiana has a justifiable homicide, or “stand your ground” law, prosecutors at the trial questioned why Broaden didn't leave her home, and a jury convicted her.
Williams’ push to right the wrongs of the past within the Orleans Parish criminal justice system allowed the two sides to work together to vacate Broaden’s conviction. But that is not necessarily the case with DA’s in other parishes.
Moroz said the way Louisiana’s laws are written, it makes it difficult to get a case back into court after a conviction is final. He and the Women’s Prison Project are pushing to get some of those procedural rules changed to allow more survivors to get their voices heard.
In Malone’s case, the Webster Parish DA consulted with the victim’s family and offered her a second chance to plead guilty to manslaughter this week.
While it does not wipe her slate clean, she was able to leave prison with credit for time served after 13-and-a-half years behind bars. It was a bittersweet pill to swallow.
“I feel like the best way out for me sometimes would have been if I just allowed him to kill me. Because, it hurts thinking that I have to live the rest of my life like this. You know, I didn't plan for this to happen. I didn't mean for this to happen. If I could take it back, I would just go back as far as not having ever met him,” Malone said.
The college student continued her studies in prison, taking classes through a Tulane program, earning her paralegal certificate. She also studied American sign language to be an interpreter.
Now that her second life locked up is behind her, Malone said she is ready for her third: Pushing for domestic violence awareness and change, including a self-defense law to really protect victims of abuse who fight back.
“The biggest question they ask is, why didn’t you leave? And I left several times. I wanted to leave that day, you know. A lot of my time, I ask, why didn’t he leave? He had every choice to not be the person he was, to not put his hands on me, to not threaten my life. And he chose not to do that,” Malone said.
Domestic violence experts say when victims of intimate partner violence do leave, it can often be a lethal move for them.