JUSTICE SYSTEMS THAT WANT CONVICTIONS, NOT JUSTICE

Jacobs, a 57-year-old grandmother, is a dead woman walking - although, in her case, walking free, after being sentenced to death for a murder she did not commit. She was locked up for almost 17 years - the only woman at that time in America who had a death sentence. She spent five years on death row, albeit one specially created for her by the Florida prison authorities, which cleared out an entire wing of an old prison for women, before locking her up in solitary confinement.

In 1976 Jacobs and her common-law husband, Jesse Tafero, were convicted of the fatal shooting of two Florida police officers, based on the false testimony of the man who had actually committed the murders. Like scores of other innocent men and women wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the United States, Jacobs was eventually released in 1992, when the real killer finally confessed.

It was too late for Tafero, though. He had been executed two years earlier, in the most grisly botched procedure in the history of the American death penalty - the electric chair malfunctioned and the executioner had to pull the switch three times, sending three massive bolts of electricity through his body. Before it was over, Tafero's head burst into flames. "It took Jesse 131/2 minutes to die," says Jacobs wearily. After they sentence you to death, they tell you exactly how they're going to do it, she continues calmly. "They say they are going to send 2,200 volts of electricity through your body until you are dead - then they ask if you have anything to say!" ......

In The Exonerated, Jacobs has been played by Susan Sarandon (who also starred as her in the TV movie version), Mia Farrow, Lynn Redgrave, Jill Clayburgh and many others. "With the exception of Mia, a lotta tall women have been me - and I'm so short," exclaims Jacobs, who has also played herself on stage and will do so for a limited run in Edinburgh, where the cast also includes Aidan Quinn and Robert Carradine.

Jacobs' heart-rending story never fails to move audiences to tears. "The play has given us a voice, but more importantly it has given Jesse a voice. As he was executed, he said, 'They're gonna remember my name.' And, thanks to The Exonerated, they do," she says.

Today, with the shimmering Atlantic Ocean virtually on her doorstep, and rolling green fields surrounding the rented farmhouse she shares with Peter Pringle, her 66-year-old partner - himself an exonerated death-row inmate, from Ireland - Jacobs has finally found freedom. Although, even when she was imprisoned in a tiny cell - "six paces from the door to the open toilet in the corner, and this wide," she says, stretching out her arms to demonstrate how she could touch the walls - she remained a free spirit. ...

FORTY years ago, New York-born Sunny Jacobs, barely 18, fell pregnant and married her high-school sweetheart in Long Island, where she and her younger brother were raised by loving parents. "My childhood was very safe, very ordinary," she says. The marriage broke down, leaving Jacobs a single parent, but blessed with a son, Eric. Then, when she was 23 - "a hippie mom and a vegetarian, believing only in peace and love" - she met Jesse Tafero, who had a police record that dated from his teenage years. But those misdemeanours would come back to haunt them. "I grew up with the romantic American dream, and I wanted that," recalls Jacobs. "All I dreamed of was having a loving husband and a father for my son; I was in love with Jesse, and I thought we would live happily ever after."

They were together for three years, and although they weren't officially married, she considered him to be her husband. She was the breadwinner, doing part-time jobs in North Carolina. In 1976 she had recently given birth to their daughter, Tina, when Tafero announced that he was going to get himself regular work - not easy, given his police record. But he just needed to go to Florida one last time to do a little deal. She didn't want to know the details.

Then he called, told her the deal had fallen through, that he was broke and had no way of getting home - "and he was staying with some girl". She said she would be right there to get him. "How stupid was that?" she wonders now. "But I loved him."

So she put nine-year-old Eric and ten-month-old Tina into her rusting car and set off. By the time she got to Florida, the car had broken down and couldn't make the long journey back. Tafero's friend, Walter Rhodes, offered them a lift part of the way home. Jacobs didn't like him, but he was willing to drive them north. "We had no money, nothing. And it was only a ride," she says.

Shortly after they set off, Rhodes pulled into a rest area to sleep. Early the next morning, two policemen, on a routine check, looked in the car, saw the sleeping passengers, then spotted a gun on the floor between Rhodes' feet. They called in to headquarters and discovered that he was on parole, and possession of a gun is a parole violation. At gunpoint, they ordered him and Tafero out of the car. Then the shots began.

Shielding her children in the car, the terrified Jacobs didn't know who had been hit. When it went quiet, she looked up and saw the two policemen were dead. Rhodes then kidnapped the family at gunpoint, taking them on a wild journey.

As they sped along the motorway, Jacobs heard helicopters and breathed a sigh of relief - they were about to be saved. Rhodes swerved to avoid a roadblock and the police opened fire on the car. Rhodes was shot in the leg; Jacobs and her family were uninjured. The cops dragged everyone out and brought them all in as suspects. Although she was scared, Jacobs was certain they would let her and Tafero go.

Paraffin tests on their hands established that Rhodes was the only one of the three who had fired a gun that day. But Rhodes was a career criminal and he knew the system. He immediately started arranging a plea bargain - one in which he would receive three life sentences and immunity from the death penalty, in exchange for serving as star witness against Jacobs and Tafero.

Tried separately, both Jacobs and Tafero were sentenced to death. She remained convinced that the police would find out she was innocent."I was so certain that I would be released that I kept my breast milk going for Tina for more than a year," she says. "I managed to get a plastic bowl and at midnight I would express my milk, so that I would still be able to nurse Tina when I got out. One day, though, I realised there was no point. She was no longer a baby."

Meanwhile, Rhodes was also writing letters - to judges and prosecutors, in which he disavowed his previous testimony against the couple and took sole responsibility for the crime. Then he would recant his recantations, so that they both remained on death row. In 1982, though, the death sentence against Jacobs was overturned and commuted to life imprisonment. Rhodes was released on parole in 1994.

But Jacobs was not without caring supporters. A childhood friend, Micki Dickoff, from Los Angeles, heard about her plight and was convinced of her innocence. She worked tirelessly for Jacobs and Tafero, bringing in a new defence lawyer and ultimately making a TV film about the case.

Despite these efforts, though, Tafero was executed. Then, two years later, Jacobs was freed, in large part based on the theory that Rhodes was actually the lone killer. It emerged that evidence in the couple's favour had been held back, including a polygraph test taken by Rhodes, which had been falsified....

Despite having received no compensation, Jacobs says, "This is the happiest time of my life; I've never known such peace, such love. It's a gift." At this she gazes up into Pringle's navy-blue eyes. And indeed, this gentle giant of a man, with his mane of snowy-white hair and beard, looks exactly like Santa Claus as he gift-wraps her in his muscular arms and kisses her pale cheek.

WHILE we talk, Pringle deftly prepares a hearty meal for us - picking fresh salad ingredients grown by Jacobs - and tells his own story. He was a fisherman who had recently separated from his wife (he has two sons, two daughters and five grandchildren) when, in 1980, he was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death for the killing of a policeman and of committing armed robbery in Ballaghaderreen, County Roscommon. "When the crime was committed, I was at least 50 miles away, in Galway," he says. "The police had pursued one of the perpetrators into the county, but they lost him. Then, for whatever reason, they decided to pick me up and fabricate evidence against me. I did not have a police record, although I had a political background and had been interned during the 1950s. Perhaps that was enough reason for them."

His death sentence (capital punishment was not abolished in Ireland until 1990) was revoked ten days before he was due to be executed. His sentence was reduced to 40 years' penal servitude, without remission. He spent almost 15 years in jail. Despite having left school at 13, he studied law and finally proved his innocence. In May 1995 his conviction was quashed. His fight for compensation is ongoing. "It's Dickensian. It's as if they're waiting for me to die," he says.

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