Stacey Lannert

Lannert founded a resource website and non-profit organization, Healing Sisters, to aid women who have suffered abuse. In 2011, she published a memoir about her experiences, Redemption: A Story of Sisterhood, Survival, and Finding Freedom Behind Bars.

On January 10, 2009, outgoing Missouri Governor Matt Blunt commuted Lannert's sentence and that of another woman convicted under similar circumstances. He said, "After an exhaustive review of the facts in both cases, I am commuting the sentences of Stacey Lannert and Charity Carey, who suffered extensive abuse before they took action against the men who raped them and subjected them to other horrible physical and emotional abuse." Lannert's new sentence of 20 years made her eligible for immediate conditional release, and she was released on January 16, 2009.

Lannert, after exhausting all of her appeals, sought from Missouri Governor Matt Blunt either commutation of her sentence to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years (she had already served 18 years) or pardon. She had gained support for clemency. On January 10, 2009, the outgoing governor announced the commutation, after completing an "exhaustive review of the evidence," in which he determined that Lannert had suffered extensive abuse by her father, Thomas Lannert. In view of time served, Stacey Lannert was soon released from prison. McCulloch has said he does not believe her claims of abuse.

Stacey Lannert has since founded Healing Sisters, a resource website and non-profit organization to aid women who have suffered abuse, as well as to work to end sexual abuse in the United States. She has appeared as a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show on May 14, 2009; The Joy Behar Show on March 16, 2011; and Piers Morgan Tonight on April 20, 2011. In 2011 she published a memoir, written with Kristen Kemp: Redemption: A Story of Sisterhood, Survival, and Finding Freedom Behind Bars.

On March 11, 2003, the court ruled in favor of the original trial judge, though "reluctantly." It held that Lannert's appeal failed before the cited standards:

The judge refused to include any claim of self-defense in his instructions to the jury. "But under Missouri law, the self-defense argument was not valid because she wasn't in actual danger at the moment she pulled the trigger." The judge concluded that there was not any basis in the evidence for her claim of self-defense. The jury found her guilty in 1992 and sentenced her to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, as required by the law.

She testified that on July 4, 1990, she and her sister got home late, entering the house via a basement window at approximately 4:15-4:30 am. Seeing a rifle, she decided to kill her father. Finding her father asleep on the sofa, she shot him. This shot broke his collarbone and startled him awake. In fear, Stacey closed her eyes and shot again. The next day, she consulted with an adult friend, who encouraged her and helped her to dispose of the murder weapon. She called the police, pretending to have found her father dead on the sofa upon returning home. But, she confessed the murder to Lt. Tom Schulte, and said it was because of the years of abuse she had suffered.

Stacey Ann Lannert (born May 28, 1972) is an American woman convicted of the murder of her father, Tom Lannert, when she was 18 years old. She testified that he had sexually abused her since she was eight years old. Sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, she served 18 years.

Stacey Lannert was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1972, the daughter of Deb Underwood and Thomas Lannert. She has said that she was close to her father and he made her feel special, but he was drinking to excess and started sexually abusing her when she was eight, and raped her at nine. Her parents divorced when she was young. Although she tried to tell her mother and a babysitter about her father's rapes, she did not have the language to make them understand, and he had threatened her to keep her quiet. Her sister Christy, two years younger, has said their father physically abused and beat her from when she was in first grade, becoming especially violent when drinking.