INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ An Indiana woman who was sentenced to death at age 16 in the stabbing death of a 78-year-old Bible school teacher has been released from prison.
A Department of Correction spokesman says Paula Cooper was released Monday from a prison in western Indiana.
Doug Garrison says Cooper left the prison in a state vehicle with $75 and wearing donated clothes. Garrison declined to say where the now-43-year-old woman was taken.
Cooper was sentenced to death after stabbing Ruth Pelke 33 times during a 1985 robbery in Gary.
The state Supreme Court intervened to set her death sentence aside in 1988, ordering her to serve a 60-year prison term. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled it unconstitutional to execute anyone under age 18 or to sentence them to life without parole.
previous post