Four years ago, Rosa Jimenez, 38, sat in a Texas prison, convicted of murdering an Austin toddler back in 2003 by stuffing paper towels down his throat. The truth is, she hadn’t killed him; the boy had likely done it to himself, something numerous experts and lawyers recognized. In fact, over the next 17 years, five different judges had advocated for Jimenez’s innocence and release, but she remained behind bars. Worse, Rosa—five foot two, with long, black hair and a girlish face—was dying from stage-four kidney disease, and a pandemic was raging through Texas prisons, killing inmates like her with weakened immune systems. Even with everything stacked against her, Jimenez—a warm, humble person—remained hopeful. “I’m not going to give up,” she wrote me in September…
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