The Case of a Lifetime
As a second year law student, Abbe Smith took on a particularly tough case her first day at NYU's prison law clinic back in 1980. Patsy Kelly Jarrett was facing a life sentence for a 1973 robbery and murder. She was convicted on the strength of a single shaky eyewitness who placed her in the vicinity of the killing of a 17-year-old gas station attendant.