Bernina Mata’s attorneys say prosecutors used homophobic rhetoric to secure a death sentence in 1999. Now they’re asking the governor to set her free.
Bernina Mata doesn’t deny killing John Draheim in 1998.
When she was 29, Mata was convicted of first-degree murder in Boone County, and sentenced to death in 1999 — a fate only altered in 2003 when former governor George Ryan commuted all death sentences in the state to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Prosecutors convinced a jury that Mata, who is lesbian, killed Draheim after she became enraged when he flirted with her. But her attorneys say Draheim was drunk, that she believed he was trying to rape her, and that she was suffering from severe mental illness at the time—most notably a flashback to sexual abuse she endured as a small child.
At her trial, prosecutors alleged Mata was a coldhearted, man-hating, sexually promiscuous woman, a heavy drinker, and had no remorse for the fact that Draheim’s five children were now fatherless.
But a Reader analysis of thousands of pages of court transcripts, mental health records, psychological evaluations, and law enforcement reports paints an entirely different picture.
Those records describe a woman who survived a childhood of traumatic rape and physical and emotional abuse, and who has long maintained that she was acting in self-defense.
At trial, prosecutors referenced Mata’s sexuality 17 times, according to her attorneys. “A normal heterosexual person would not be so offended by [Draheim’s flirting] as to murder,” Owens told the court in a statement highlighted by Mata’s attorneys.
The clemency petition is Mata’s last hope for freedom.
Her supporters say the petition is also the state’s chance to right an egregious wrong perpetrated against the LGBTQ+ community.
https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/news/criminalizing-queerness/