Between her daughter’s hugs and homemade food flavors, Ashley Marie Torres Feliciano resumes life outside prison

Since Monday, Ashley has embraced freedom again, but – better yet – held back the little girl she had to leave when she was two. governor Wanda Vazquez Garced He accepted his leniency application and granted her a conditional pardon for a period of 10 years, during which time he will have to comply with a number of conditions, such as electronic monitoring for one year.

“I slept with my daughter in bed to talk and she was close to me, she laughed, she shared …”, she told what was part of her last night when she returned home with her daughter and her mother, Lucrecia Feliciano, who in the last decade has strongly defended the defense of his daughter.

Complicity with her daughter

Despite the years apart, the complicity between Ashley and her daughter, Nashaliz, is natural. She was the one who kept her standing, waiting for that new opportunity that had been denied her until last week. “What motivated me the most during this time? My daughter and faith, because I always told my baby: “Together we will make it and together we will throw the 111 balloons,” she said.

In the house you breathed the joy caused by the arrival of a loved one after years of absence. For Ashley, there is a new view of the mountains, the feeling of fresh air, the smell of homemade food and the warmth of a mother and daughter, among many other loved ones.

The launching ceremony of the 111 balloons, representing each of the years in which she was sentenced, is on the agenda. He is also awaiting a visit to the cemetery, where his brother and a nephew are resting who died while serving his sentence. “I want to study, to work … when I was younger, I wanted to be a nurse high (High school) I wanted to be a lawyer, but now I want to experiment with other things to see what I like or what I don’t like, ”she said, acknowledging that she thought about studying criminal justice to help those who, like and she, I ask for a new opportunity.

Sharing his testimony with young people, through discussions and a book, is also on his list of priorities. “Prison is bad. There are two options, imprisonment or death, and yes, one can share his mind, but all with a certain limit. I entered at 16 (years old) and I am 28 (years old), meaning 11 years lost. I can’t think the way I thought before and he has to understand that, “he said.

Never lose faith

He said he had never lost faith in returning home, despite the fact that sometimes freedom seems to recede. But one day he knocked on the door of Proyecto Inocencia, guided by a lawyer Julio Fontanet, through a dear person and that illusion caught. “I have always had faith, because I have always been innocent … I have always prayed and trusted in the Lord. It was like an (internal) struggle, but I always had faith and I knew it was God’s time. “, Detained.

When Project Innocence took over from Ashley, they found that the Justice Department had suppressed the exculpatory evidence and proceeded to request a new trial. This request reached the Supreme Court, which, by a divided decision, understood that the evidence in the dispute was cumulative, so it was not enough to grant a new trial.

The events for which Ashley was sued date back to February 21, 2009 when, in the middle of a family activity, her partner and her daughter’s father, Steven Quirindongo, beat her several times, as part of a pattern of violence. Her brothers, finding out what happened, confront the aggressor and the fight that led to the death of one of them, Nelson Torres Feliciano, was generated.