Following the 2012 Supreme Court decision of Miller v. Alabama, which declared mandatory life sentences for juvenile offenders to be unconstitutional, Fetters became the first inmate in Iowa to be re-sentenced in November 2013.
[2] The following month, she was recommended for compassionate parole due to a prognosis of inoperable stage-four breast cancer, and she was released to a hospice care center in Des Moines, Iowa in December 2013.
[4] In January 1994, Kristina Fetters was sent to Orchard Place, an unlocked facility in Des Moines for children with behavioral or mental health problems, and she was put on Prozac.
On October 25, 1994, the morning of the murder, Fetters and her roommate, Jeanie Fox, escaped from the facility and hitchhiked to her great-aunt Arlene Klehm's home in northern Polk County, Iowa.
[6] In 2008, Fetters' attorneys filed a petition challenging her life sentence, arguing cruel and unusual punishment that was in violation of the Constitution and Iowa state law.