Jenna Oakley, then 15 years old, was sentenced in 2016 to 15 years in prison, for manslaughterin her stepmother and stealing her car. As an ADULT. She is in the Correctional Institution for Women in Kentucky, US.

The issue is:

1) She was NOT an adult;

2) She DIDN'T act like an adult;

3) She REPENTED of the crime at the age of 17, before she became an adult;

and (how could this circumstance remain unconsidered?!)

4) She clearly WOULDN'T have committed this crime if she would have been an adult at that time, because in this case her parrents wouldn't have been able to create this hopeless situation for her, which urged her juvenile mind to commit this crime.

 

Who is Jenna Oakley? What did she do? WHY?

More information about her:

https://mycrimelibrary.com/jenna-oakley-teen-killer-murders-stepmother/​

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gqTcg_oiYpk

Jenna Oakley, born 03/02/2001, now in the Correctional Institution for Women in Kentucky, US, lived in Indiana with her mother and her 2 years younger brother in an abusive home, until April 2016. At that time she was 15 and had herself been illegally dating a 6 year older boyfriend, Kenneth Nigh, for about 3 or 4 years, but her mother never called the Police. Jenna loved Kenneth, and Kenneth loved Jenna, and nobody was really bothered by that relationship. Maybe because nobody except her mother knew about it. Still, this strange love relationship was, of course, not everything what the girl needed: she needed especially parential care and love. According to her mitigation specialist Suzanne Hooper the girl longed for a real family, and her mother didn't care about Jenna and even didn't put the house in order for her. But then the moment came, and the girl revealed her bad life with her mother to her father Phillip Oakley who lived apart from her mother with another woman, Rhonda Oakley (They were already married). Her father agreed to take the girl and her brother to his family, Rhonda became their stepmother. Jenna's brother David Oakley liked the new life and especially Rhonda. But Jenna's life didn't become much better: yes, she got a better house to live in, but her new parents took all electronics away from Jenna in order to stop her and her boyfriend from writing to each other, and they also called the Police to "explain" everything to Kenneth. They also threatened him and Jenna to send him to prison if he would contact Jenna again. The 3-year-old relationship was predestinated to be completely over just because of one movement of her father. But did her father give her that "real family" Jenna was dreaming of while living with her mother? Unfortunately not. On the contrary: the only kind of love which she had been getting for so long, the one from her boyfriend, was suddenly completely taken away from her, but no parential love came instead. Father didn't discuss his new rules with Jenna and her brother, he just set them. Law and order as well as his own rules was something much more important to him than fatherly love for his daughter or happiness of her or any other person. He was not a "daddy", he was a "sir", he was the law of the home.  Hooper speaks of "lack of emotional involvement". Punishments for breaking rules at father's home were severe: father even locked Jenna in the basement, and her stepmother suggested sending Jenna away to a boarding school. Many witnesses in the court said that Jenna wasn't a defiant girl and behaved everywhere correctly and was loved by people who knew her, she was also excellent at school. Only father said that she had been defiant at home. So one can assume, the only one transgression against her father's rules was her trying to contact her boyfriend Kenneth again, in order to get that "portion of love" which she had used to have before she moved away from her mother. After suddenly having much more felt problems at her father's home than at her mother's home (disappointment with her father, too, the fear to lose her boyfriend's love, losing all contacts with her old friends on the phone, the prospective of having to go to a boarding school, etc. etc. ...) and apparently having no opportunity anymore to go back to mother, Jenna didn't know anymore what to do. She wanted to get rid of so many problems but didn't know how. The law didn't allow her to break away with her father, she was not of age. She had to obey. She didn't want to show her frustration at school or somewhere else where there were people who didn't have anything to do with her problems. Still, she didn't have any power and patience anymore to continue living that way, living without being really loved by at least one person near her.

Finally Jenna committed this crime. She manslaughtered her stepmother who suggested Jenna's father to get rid of Jenna again instead of starting to really care about her, her life and her happiness. But she committed this crime so much as a juvenile and so little as an adult!

What would an adult, 18 or over, have done instead? An adult girl would have just moved to her boyfriend, even without father's consent, and created a happy family with him. But she couldn't. She didn't have this choice, exactly because she was not an adult!

At the age of 17, still before she became an adult, she even repented of the crime, in the court, even though the situation had really been desparate for her.

Shortly before killing her stepmother she wrote a plan of how she would kill the whole family in order to date her boyfriend again. An adult would have never acted this way, even if this adult would have been somehow put into the same situation! Because an adult would have really considered the fact that it was nearly impossible to remain undiscovered after having murdered the whole family. 

She didn't make the above mentioned plan reality, even though she could have done it. This proves that she had written that plan only because of feelings, without thorough thinking. An adult thinks thouroughly before writing something like that. She didn't. Because she was not an adult.

Finally the way she killed her stepmother: after a verbal argument, then getting physical, then screaming while killing... Did she think like an adult while committing this crime in such a way? No! It was a behavior of a 1-year-old child trying to beat its mother after she takes a toy away from it.

Non of the circumstances spoke really for convicting Jenna Oakley as an adult. The "particular cruelty" of the crime was apparently caused only by her hatred towards her stepmother which was just as deep and strong as her love for Kenneth. Children have strong feelings, too, when they are overheard. And it was the case: the case of an overheard, unattended, mentally and emotionally thrown away child.

We do publicly petition the Kentucky Court of Appeals to grant a retrial because of the clear misconduct of the prosecutor when he redirected this case to the court for adults and because of the inappropriate damage caused by that decision. After all Jenna is already 6 years in a prison for adults. We want Jenna to be convicted as a juvenile, not as an adult. Then she would be free already now, because she has been already 6 years in prison.

Jenna has suffered enough, now we want a free and thriving Jenna, not the incarcerated and crying one!