A woman who pleaded guilty to dressing as a clown and in 1990 murdering the wife of a man she later married was released from prison Saturday, ending a case that has been strange even by Florida standards.
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Sheila Keen-Warren, 61, was released 18 months after she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the shooting of Marlene Warren, Florida Department of Corrections records show. The plea deal came shortly before her trial would have started.
Keen-Warren, who has maintained her innocence even after her plea, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. But she had been in custody for seven years since her arrest in 2017, and Florida’s law in 1990 allowed significant credit for good behaviour. It had been expected she would be released in about two years.
“Sheila Keen-Warren will always be an admitted convicted murderer and will wear that stain for every day for the rest of her life,” Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said in a statement on Saturday.
Greg Rosenfeld, Keen-Warren’s lawyer, has said she only took the plea deal because she would be released in less than two years and had been facing a life sentence if convicted at trial.
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“We are absolutely thrilled that Ms Keen-Warren has been released from prison and is returning to her family. As we’ve stated from the beginning, she did not commit this crime,” he said Saturday in a text message.