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He was freed after 19 years in prison for a murder he didn t commit. Then came the COVID lockdown
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March has brought both sorrow and salvation for Jeremy Puckett.
Consider his history: On March 14, 2002, Puckett, then 25, was sentenced to life in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. The victim’s body had been discovered on a Rancho Cordova (Sacramento County) road four years earlier, to the date. Puckett proclaimed his innocence for two decades, but justice true justice didn’t come until March 13, 2020.
On that date, Puckett stepped through a hidden door into a cage in a downtown Sacramento courtroom. He wore street clothes and the half-haggard, half-wired look of a man lacking sleep. Through bars, Puckett saw family and friends packed tight on the benches of the low-slung gallery. He saw a grown daughter and son who were just toddlers when sheriff’s deputies arrested him 19 years earlier.