Hope’s Door calls on Illinois Governor JB Pritzker to pardon Keshia Golden—and calls on policymakers, prosecutors, courts, and advocates across the country to confront the criminalization of survivors of domestic violence.
In October 2022, following a prior protection order and numerous calls to the police, Golden asserted that she was beaten by her then-boyfriend, Calvin Sidney, who hit her, grabbed her by the hair, and slammed her head against a kitchen counter. To make him stop, Golden grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed him in the leg, but the knife hit an artery and Sidney subsequently died from the injury. Golden was charged with first-degree murder and after four years accepted a last-minute plea agreement to involuntary manslaughter that allowed her to avoid prison and return to her young daughter.
Keshia Golden’s case is not an isolated tragedy. It is part of a national pattern in which survivors of domestic violence are punished for the very acts they take to survive.
We have seen this scenario before. In New York, Nikki Addimando was sentenced to 19 years to life after killing her longtime abuser, despite evidence of years of horrific physical and sexual abuse. Her case became a powerful indictment of the ways in which the criminal legal system can fail to recognize the realities of domestic violence and the circumstances in which survivors fight for their lives. After appealing, Nikki’s sentence was reduced under New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act.
When a survivor fights back against an abusive partner, the circumstances that led to that moment are too often stripped away. The years of coercive control. The threats. The beatings. The terror. The rapes. The isolation. The financial abuse. The fear for a child’s safety. The desperate calculation of what it will take to stay alive. Instead, the survivor is reduced to a single act—and prosecuted for it.
A survivor should not have to spend years behind bars because she defended herself. And accepting a plea under the enormous pressure of facing a potentially devastating prison sentence should never be mistaken for an acknowledgment that the survivor was not acting in self-defense.
Domestic violence is a pattern of coercive power and control—not a single incident viewed in isolation. Survivors often live with escalating violence and threats long before the moment that ultimately brings them into criminal justice system.
We cannot ask survivors to survive their abusers and then punish them for what they did to survive.
Hope’s Door urges Governor Pritzker to pardon Keshia Golden. But our call is much larger than one pardon.
We call on every state to examine how survivors of domestic violence are treated when they are arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated following acts of self-defense and survival. We call on prosecutors and courts to ensure that evidence of domestic violence, coercive control, and trauma is meaningfully considered. We call on lawmakers to create and strengthen pathways to resentencing, clemency, pardons, and release for incarcerated survivors whose histories of abuse were inadequately considered at trial or sentencing. And we call on advocates, attorneys, and communities to stand with incarcerated survivors and help amplify their voices.
To incarcerated survivors: Your conviction does not negate what happened to you. Your story matters. The violence you experienced matters. The threats you endured matter. The decisions you made to survive matter.
To those of us outside prison walls: We too have a responsibility. We must listen. We must believe survivors. We must challenge systems that criminalize survival. And we must demand pathways to justice for those who have been imprisoned for surviving violence. No survivor should be imprisoned because she fought to protect herself or her children. No justice system should judge a survivor’s actions without confronting the violence that came before them. No survivor should have to die to prove she was a victim.
Call on Illinois Governor Pritzker to Pardon Keshia Golden.
Contact Info: (217) 782-6830 – Office of the Governor, 207 State House, Springfield, IL 62706
https://gov.illinois.gov/contact-us/voice-an-opinion.html
Support the Go Fund Me for Keisha Golden
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-keshia-and-her-three-year-old-daughter