Prison Brides is all about unconventional love, but it seems like Gabby and Jamal have quite a ways to go to get his case overturned.
Lifetime’s Prison Brides docuseries follows the ups and down of seven different couples who are fighting for their love within the United States prison system.
And while most of the couples who agreed to share their unconventional love stories on this show’s first season likely only wanted to shed some light on how difficult these kinds of relationships can be – it one of the Prison Brides couples seem to have a much more serious reason for joining the show.
Jamal and Gabby’s mission
If you have been following along with the Prison Brides drama in the last couple months, you will already be familiar with Gabriella “Gabby” a model from Germany, and her incarcerated husband, Jamal.
However, what you may not be aware of is that Gabby and Jamal have been making a considerable effort on social media (and across other platforms) to overturn Jamal’s conviction, as they believe that he was wrongly convicted for the murder of his best friend.
Some facts about the American criminal justice system
Innocent or not, Jamal is going to have to be ready for quite the fight if he intends to take on the United States criminal justice system to have his case overturned.
Here are a few facts that can put the enormous scale of this complex system into context:
| Category | Description |
| How many people are incarcerated in the United States? | Almost 2 million people (as per the Prison Policy Initiative website) |
| How many prisons are there in the United States? | More than 6,000 prisons comprising 1,566 state prisons, 98 federal prisons, 3,116 local jails, 1,323 juvenile correctional facilities, 181 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian country jails and more (as per the Prison Policy Initiative website) |
| How much of the world’s population is incarcerated within the United States | The United States has more people behind bars per capita than any other nation in the world. In fact, almost 16% of all incarcerated people in the world are imprisoned within the United States (as per the Vera organization) |
| How many people in the United States have a criminal record? | About 79 million people (as per the Prison Policy Initiative website) |
| How many people in the United States are on probation or parole? | Over 2.9 million people are on probation and over 800,000 people are on parole (as per the Prison Policy Initiative website) |
And, to top it all off, only an estimated 1% of the United Stated prison population was falsely convicted, with the National Registry of Exonerations only listing about 3,433 exonerations since 1989.
Why was Jamal convicted?
Just to recap the most important parts of the case, Jamal (Jamal Anthony Moore) was convicted on charges of second-degree murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony for a crime committed in 2013.
As a result, Jamal was sentenced to 20 to 40 in prison for the second-degree murder conviction and a further two years’ imprisonment for the felony-firearm conviction.
Jamal was about 17 years old when he was first convicted, and he has already served about 11 years in prison.
The basics of Jamal’s appeal
Before Jamal was convicted, the jury heard that Carlos’s girlfriend (Carlos is the 17 year-old who Jamal was convicted of murdering) saw him and Carlos heading to Carlos’s Uncle’s house on the day of the incident.
She also testified that he was acting erratically and that he looked like he was “on something”. Furthermore, Jamal’s mother testified and told the police that Jamal had admitted to her that he killed Carlos after the fact.
However, Jamal and Gabby believe that they have a strong case to overturn this conviction, based on the fact that Jamal’s mother allegedly lied under oath.
Gabby has even revealed through her many TikTok videos on the subject that they have a recording of a phone call between Jamal and his mother, which will prove that he is actually innocent.
What is holding up the process?
If you have seen the verve with which Gabby and Jamal have pleaded his innocence in the last couple of years, you may have wondered why exactly they have not taken their appeal to court just yet.
However, Gabby recently revealed that they simply do not have the finances at their disposal to cover the various fees and costs associated with such an appeal.
As a result, the couple has even started a GoFundMe campaign, with the goal of raising $30,000 to go towards getting Jamal home back with his son and his family.
Also read:
- Prison Brides: All the inmates’ crimes
- Is Prison Brides real?
- Prison Brides’ most interesting characters
