Woman who found Irish sanctuary after years on US death row dies in house fire

Sunny Jacobs in London in February 2006. She founded a nonprofit that campaigns against wrongful convictions. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

After enduring hellish years on America’s death row for a crime she said she did not commit, Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs found an idyll, and healing, in rural Ireland. But in a final, cruel twist, her sanctuary claimed her life.

Jacobs, 78, and her carer, Kevin Kelly, were found dead on Tuesday after a fire at her cottage near the village of Casla, in County Galway.