‘Sunny’ follows two exonerees, Sunny and Peter, as they rebuild their lives, fall in love, and wed after spending a combined 30 years on death row. Creating a heaven for themselves in pastoral rural Ireland, they open their ramshackle home to other exonerees attempting to re-enter the world, sharing how they chose forgiveness to make space for joy.
Some stories are so extraordinary that they almost defy belief — and yet, they are true, and they are happening all around us.
When Sonia "Sunny” Jacobs was released from death row after 17 years, the warden opened the doors and told her, “have a nice life.” His ironic taunt became a prophecy. So much came of her life, she told us in her final days, that ultimately, she reflected, “I wouldn't change what happened to me."
Try to imagine that?
Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle survived something most of us simply could not fathom: a wrongful conviction, a death sentence, 5 years of solitary confinement, her children placed in the foster care system, and a cumulative 30 years on death row. This was followed by years of isolation on the outside.
Yet somehow miraculously, they found each other, fell in love, and wed.
There was something Sunny and Peter had which made them uniquely resilient in their old age - a hard-won methodology for peace. They spent the remainder of their days opening up their ramshackle home in pastoral rural Ireland to others like themselves - Ray Towler, Derrick Jaminson,Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin, Rodger Dean Gillispie, and countless other exonerees who came to them seeking help and humanity in their effort to reenter the world. They created a first-of-its-kind refuge and rehabilitation center for people newly released to find their footing in inhospitable world.
‘Sunny’ reveals this story for the first time in intimate detail - an impossible, necessary, and ultimately transcendent story as lived by a courageous woman who refused to have her life entirely stolen from her and who chose - always through helping others - to imbue each of her remaining days with meaning.
With countless “true crime” stories flooding media today, almost none of them reveal the quiet work of what is required to remake one’s life after wrongful incarceration. ‘Sunny’ fills that narrative void, proving that reintegration is made possible first and foremost by love, and that survival in the face of insurmountable injustice is not just possible, but beautiful. The insights Sunny came to -- about the nature of forgiveness and the good life, the lessons she lived in order to profess -- have quite a bit of relevance for all of us.
