After eight years of denied measures, law students and professors at Washington University’s Civil Justice Clinic have finally secured a response from the highest court in the state in regards to a woman convicted as an accessory to her husband’s murder.

Last Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court requested that the State Parole Board decide parole conditions for the woman, who is currently imprisoned.

Shirley Lute, 76, was convicted of aiding in the 1978 murder of her husband, Melvin Lute, who she said abused her. Her son, who was convicted of the actual murder, told officials that his mother had paid him to kill Melvin Lute for insurance money. Lute has consistently denied this claim.

“Her son [later] said that he made up everything about her being involved because he was angry with her because he thought she’d turned him in for the murder,” said Jane Aiken, William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law and director of the Civil Justice Clinic.

In reality, the son’s girlfriend turned him into the police.

Aiken first started working on the case when a group of law professors statewide convened to form the Missouri Clemency Coalition. Students at the Law School are assigned two to three cases a semester from the various law clinics.

The coalition identified 12 women who were convicted of killing or aiding in the murder of their batterers; each woman had received excessively long sentences. One of them, Lute, was serving a life sentence for first-degree murder without possibility of parole for 50 years.

The legal legwork involved in Lute’s case focused on how the State Parole Board had interpreted requests for Lute’s chance at parole.

In 2004, Governor Bob Holden commuted Lute’s life sentence and asked the Parole Board to examine her parole conditions.

“The parole board evaluated [the request] and determined that the sentence that she had gotten was excessive and commuted her sentence from life without parole to life with parole,” said Aiken.

Unfortunately, the parole board had a change in personnel with the new administration and did not examine Lute’s case until six months later in 2005 when they decided to deny her parole.

“The [new] parole board had exceeded its authority by not following the governor’s intent in his commutations,” which had ordered that parole be included in Lute’s sentence, said Aiken.

Aiken and her students brought a habeas corpus petition saying that the board had ignored the governor’s intent and wrongfully kept Lute in prison, but again they were denied.

A habeas corpus petition is a writ that orders a person in custody to be brought in person before a court. It places the burden of proof on those detaining the person to justify the detention.

Undaunted by the request’s denial, Aiken and her students took the case straight to the Supreme Court, suing on habeas corpus and skipping over the Appellate Courts in the process.

Olivia Bradbury, a third-year law student who joined the case this past fall, wrote the habeas corpus brief.

“It was quite exciting,” said Bradbury. “We didn’t know if the court would be receptive.”

In the opinion from Tuesday’s ruling, Supreme Court Judge Mary Russell wrote that although the parole board had denied parole on the basis that parole would deprecate the seriousness of Lute’s offense, they must review the application.

Former Governor Holden issued an affidavit supporting Lute, stating that, “the circumstances surrounding her offense, the inadequate defense presented in Ms. Lute’s trial, the lack of knowledge at the time of Battered Women’s Syndrome, the length of time she had spent in prison, her exemplary behavior while incarcerated, her age and health, and the fact that Ms. Lute had served the retributive and deterrent portion of her sentence” support her release.

Judge Stephen Limbaugh Jr. dissented, writing that Holden should not be allowed to reinterpret his 2004 statement.

“I am afraid to speculate what other kinds of orders and pronouncements of a governor who has left office might also be subject to this precedent,” he wrote in the Opinion.

The parole board plans to assess Lute’s case early this week, said Brian Hauswirth, spokesman for Missouri Department of Corrections and Parole Board.

“They’re going to review it as soon as possible and take a couple of days, review the findings and then take appropriate lawful actions to make a decision,” said Hauswirth.

Once parole conditions are finalized, Lute has two daughters ready to take her in. Lute has already spent 29 years in jail.

The Supreme Court also ordered that Lynda Branch, another woman convicted of killing her husband, should be set free. The Law Clinic at Mizzou, also members of the Missouri Clemency Coalition, worked on Branch’s case.

“We just spent so much time reading and researching, looking over the regulations, and doing a lot of brainstorming, analyzing sessions with Jane Aiken and [other clinic supervisors],” said third-year law student Yeena Yoon.

“The clinic really made a difference. It becomes really personal to you and you just want to work that much harder,” said Yoon.

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