Thirty-three years is a long time to wait. For our first female client and my dear friend, Nancy Wagner (formerly McGeoghean, pictured right), that’s how long it took to overturn her wrongful conviction. For seven of those years, the New England Innocence Project (NEIP) stood alongside Nancy and fought for her freedom.
I first met Nancy in 2016. I was ushered into one of the small attorney meeting rooms at the Framingham Women’s Prison and was greeted by a gentle, soft-spoken woman accompanied by a doting Labrador retriever – one of many she trained for people with disabilities as part of the “NEADS” program.
At the age of 21, Nancy was wrongfully convicted of murdering her beloved 23-month-old daughter, Sarah. Science would later reveal that Sarah had in fact died in a tragic accident while sleeping in her car seat at home. However, this was long before anyone knew of the dangers of accidental asphyxiation by car seat straps. Nancy chose to go to trial, trusting that the legal system would uncover the truth that she would never intentionally cause harm to her daughter, but it took many more decades for that to happen.
Having just returned to work after giving birth to my own baby girl, I could not imagine suffering such a tremendous loss. While I could not bring Sarah back, I wanted to do all I could to correct the compounding tragedy of Nancy’s wrongful conviction.
That first visit began our seven-year journey that would involve the work of a team of attorneys led by Michael Fee from Verrill and many dedicated people from Latham & Watkins. Revealing the truth in Nancy’s case required the expertise of five skilled experts in psychology, forensic pathology, pediatrics, and serology.
Over the last seven years, Nancy and I developed a deep friendship involving weekly phone calls and many visits inside Framingham Women’s Prison. After her release in 2020, we transitioned to walks around Cambridge Common and frequent texts as Nancy quickly became adept at technology.
Finally, on May 24, 2023, Middlesex Superior Court Judge Joshua Wall overturned Nancy’s first-degree murder conviction. The Court’s decision [link] granting Nancy’s Motion for New Trial recognized the “compelling” new evidence that Sarah was not murdered but rather died by accidental asphyxiation while sleeping in her car seat. Judge Wall wrote that, “[i]t appears that the trial resulted in an unjust conviction which must be vacated as the only fair remedy.” Rather than face another trial where she would have to trust a system that had failed her, Nancy chose closure through what’s called an Alford plea, ending the case while still maintaining her innocence.
I’m often asked why correcting wrongful convictions takes so long, and the difficult truth is that we work within a legal system designed to maintain convictions. Nancy’s wrongful conviction is unfortunately not rare: It is similar to that of so many other women wrongfully convicted of harming their children because most of these (70%) were also cases in which no crime actually occurred.
Through all the challenges, Nancy showed amazing resilience. After her release in 2020, she began working and supporting herself almost immediately. She got her driver’s license, reconnected with a vast network of family and friends who supported her throughout her lengthy incarceration, and navigated a world that had drastically changed since 1990.
After Nancy’s case was finally over, I had the great pleasure of witnessing two events that would have been impossible to imagine on that first visit at the Framingham Women’s Prison. In August, I attended Nancy’s wedding to her husband Ray, a warm and energetic man whose friendship helped her keep hope alive while she was in prison. In September, I watched as Nancy spoke bravely on stage in front of more than 200 people as part of NEIP’s annual Voices of the Innocent event. After so many years of living trapped inside a harmful and untrue narrative, Nancy was able to tell a part of her own story unafraid and secure in her freedom. Moments like these, while they don’t come often enough, are the reason we keep fighting for freedom.
