Parental Grief, Wrongful Incarceration, and the Continued Effects after Exoneration

ABSTRACT

The current article was motivated by a case study to diversify present literature on parental grief and wrongful conviction. The authors sought to accomplish this by reviewing available literature on parental grief through the lens of mothers who are forced to grieve both the loss of their child as well as the loss of their personal freedom as a result of being wrongfully incarcerated for the death of said child. The integration of these two topics revealed significant emotional, physical, and adaptive effects of being a female exoneree compounded with the effect of being convicted of physically harming or killing her own child. A review of this information revealed several risk factors contributing to the development of both psychiatric and medical conditions, as well as increasing the risk of mortality in women, and allowed the current authors to propose future directions for practice and research.

KEYWORDS:

• Wrongful conviction
• wrongful incarceration
• parental grief
• exoneration
• filicide
• child death

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ “Casey Jefferson” is a previous case of a private psychologist. Her name has been changed in order to ensure her anonymity and protect the confidentiality of the client.

² As written in Memorandum in support of petition for a writ of habeas corpus.