
Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs, a former death row prisoner whose story of wrongful conviction was featured in the off-Broadway play “The Exonerated” and who became a prominent advocate for formerly incarcerated prisoners, died in a house fire, along with her caregiver, in County Galway, Ireland, on June 3, 2025.
Ms. Jacobs was convicted and sentenced to death in 1976 for the murders of two law enforcement officers at a Florida rest stop. She and Jesse Tafero, the father of one of her children, were both sentenced to death based largely on testimony from Walter Rhodes, a co-defendant who received a life sentence in exchange for his cooperation. Ms. Jacobs always maintained her innocence, telling police she had been in the back seat of the car asleep with her children when the murders occurred. Physical evidence, including gun powder residue found on Mr. Rhodes’ hands, contradicted the prosecution’s narrative of events and Mr. Rhodes changed his story multiple times throughout the investigation and trial proceedings. Mr. Rhodes was eventually paroled after serving just part of his sentence. Ms. Jacobs spent 17 years in prison, including five on death row. Mr. Tafero was executed in 1990 in Florida’s electric chair, in what became an infamously botched execution.
In 1992, after 17 years of imprisonment, Ms. Jacobs was granted a new trial. She later agreed to enter an Alford plea to second-degree murder in exchange for being released with time served. The plea allowed Ms. Jacobs to maintain her innocence while acknowledging that prosecutors had sufficient evidence for a likely conviction. Ms. Jacobs’ plea agreement illustrates a pattern among wrongful conviction cases where defendants accept plea agreements rather than full exonerations. Legal experts note that such plea deals allow prosecutors and state officials to avoid admitting error while providing defendants with immediate freedom, though without complete restoration of their rights.
Following her release, Ms. Jacobs advocated against capital punishment and for criminal legal reform more broadly. She often spoke publicly about her case and the broader issues of wrongful convictions, becoming a recognized voice in the movement to abolish the death penalty. In 1998, Ms. Jacobs met Peter Pringle, an Irishman who had also been wrongfully sentenced to death before being exonerated in 1995 after 15 years in prison. The couple married in 2011 and established the Sunny Center in 2014, an organization that supports the wrongfully convicted. Mr. Pringle died in 2023.
“Everyone gets challenged in life and you can either spend the rest of your life looking backwards or you can make a decision to keep going. That’s the choice I made.”
Amicus, a legal charity that helps provide legal representation for death row prisoners in the US, worked closely with Ms. Jacobs over the years. In a statement, Amicus said, “Sunny truly believed in the goodness of every person, with forgiveness and empathy at the heart of her own healing. She touched everyone she met with her unbound love and will be deeply missed by all who knew her.”
Rory Carroll, Woman who found Irish sanctuary after years on US death row dies in house fire, The Guardian, June 4, 2025; Ronan McGreevy, Woman who died in Connemara house fire named as former US death row inmate Sunny Jacobs, The Irish Times, June 3, 2025.