At 16-year-old Laquanda “Faye” Jacobs was arrested and later convicted for a murder she and others allege she didn’t commit. Now, after serving 26 years in prison Jacobs is trying to clear her name according to People. According to the media outlet, Jacobs was raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, worked at a Burger King,  was looking forward to going to college and starting a professional career. However, all those dreams went away after she was arrested and convicted in 1992 for fatally shooting of Kevin Gaddy, 17, a former elementary school classmate.

Her nightmare began on Feb. 9, 1992, when Jacobs was driving with her mother near 29th and Jefferson streets in Little Rock and they stopped to check out a commotion. On the spot, an officer asked Jacobs her name, then handcuffed her and took her to the police station. A test for gun residue on her hands was negative. But nine days later she was charged with killing Gaddy, allegedly because she wanted his Chicago Bulls jacket.

She was found guilty and sentenced as a juvenile to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In 2014 her appeal for help caught the attention of the Midwest Innocence Project, which took up her case and gathered new evidence that undermined the conviction. “Her innocence was so clear,” says MIP’s executive director, Tricia Rojo Bushnell.

Before MIP could present its findings to a judge, however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sentencing of juveniles to life without parole was unconstitutional. The state of Arkansas was forced to reconsider Jacobs’ sentence — and in cutting it down to 40 years, the prosecutor offered Jacobs a deal that would release her immediately with credit for the 26 years she’d already served.

Jacobs accepted the deal and was released from prison in 2018 after spending 26 years in prison. Now as a former inmate who completed her sentence, she gave away the legal right to go back to court while incarcerated and prove she was innocent of the murder in 1992.

Now at 42-years-old due to her criminal record, Jacobs is having a time finding employment or signing a lease for a home, which means it will be difficult for her to attain a goal she always wanted above all others, motherhood by adoption. Now her only option is to appeal to the governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, for a full pardon. He declined this request in January and now she was to wait six years to ask for another appeal.

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