California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger upheld a State Board of Parole Hearings decision releasing Deborah Peagler from prison. Peagler was serving a 25 year to life sentence for the murder of an abusive boy friend. She has lung cancer and according to doctors she has only months to live.

California rarely grants parole to inmates with life sentences. According to UC Berkeley Law Professor and associate dean of the campus’s Jurisprudence and Social Policy program Jonathan Simon there are currently approximately 30,000 “lifers” such as Peagler in California prison but on the average only five are released each year and 1000 more are sentenced to indeterminate life sentences each year.

In 1982 Peagler lured her boyfriend, Oliver Wilson, to a park where two men killed him. Wilson beat Peagler with a bull whip and forced her into prostitution. He repeatedly raped her a few days before he was murdered and he sexually abused her six year old daughter.

Peagler’s release is over the opposition of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office which points out the Peagler’s testimony has been inconsistent in regard to the abuse and to whether or not she knew that the men were going to kill Wilson. Furthermore they point out that Peagler had other reasons for wanting to see Wilson dead. She was jealous about Wilson’s new girl friend and she was the beneficiary on Wilson’s life insurance policy.

The men who killed Wilson are still serving 25 to life sentences.