Skip to main content Currently Reading He was freed after 19 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. Then came the COVID lockdown FacebookTwitterEmail 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.