A California grandmother is finally free after spending three decades in prison for a murder she did not commit.

Mary Virgina Jones finally walks free after being released from an L.A. prison late Monday for serving a 32 year sentence for first-degree murder. The case was reopened after quite a bit of persuasion by law students from the University of Southern California’s Post-Conviction Justice Project. The students successfully argued Jones was forced into her role by her then abusive boyfriend, Mose Willis.

The USC students argued Jones would not have been convicted had the jury heard testimony on the effects of “intimate partner battering,” formerly known as “battered women’s syndrome.” At the time of the murder Jones was involved with Mose Willis who at gunpoint ordered Jones to participate in the crime. On April 3, 1981, Willis kidnapped two men in a fake cocaine deal and forced Jones to drive them to an alley in Los Angeles, where he shot both men. One of the men died.

Jones, fled afraid that he would shoot and kill her too. She was found and arrested several days later hiding at a friend’s house. “He pulled a gun on me and shot at me, and my mother witnessed that,” Denetra Jones-Goodie, Jones’ daughter, told NBC Los Angeles. A week before the crime, one of the law students said in a statement, Willis shot at Jones’ daughter and threatened to kill them both if either of them had went to the police. The Times reported Willis died on death row in 1988.

Jones’ family rejoiced in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday when Judge C. Ryan ordered her release after she pleaded no contest to a lesser charge of manslaughter. Jones was welcomed by a swarm of family and friends when she walked out of Century Regional Detention Facility around 11 p.m. Monday .