SPRINGFIELD, Ill., Sept. 24 (UPI) -- An Illinois woman convicted of stabbing her 10-year-old son to death as he slept has asked Gov. Rod Blagojevich for a full pardon, reports said Wednesday.
Julie Rea-Harper is serving a 65-year sentence for the killing of her son, Joel Kirkpatrick, in their home in 1997. But in a clemency petition delivered to Blagojevich's legal counsel Tuesday, Rea-Harper's defenders claim the murder was actually committed by Tommy Lynn Sells.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch said Sells was a one-time St. Louis resident implicated in more than a dozen killings nationwide. Sells has claimed to have committed as many as 50 slayings. He is awaiting execution for the fatal stabbing of a 13-year-old Texas girl in 1999.
Though Rea-Harper isn't sentenced to death, her petition makes reference to a spate of wrongful murder convictions in Illinois in recent years that led to mass clemency for all Illinois death row inmates this year.
State prosecutors said the state appellate prosecutor's office would oppose the clemency petition.
