Rish Wins Court Challenge

The Kankakee woman serving a life sentence for the 1987 kidnapping and murder of businessman Stephen Small has been given the chance to challenge her sentence after the Illinois Appeals Court granted her appeal late last week. The Chicago Tribune says the ruling is part of a petition from December 2017 that asked for a resentencing hearing to allow the court to consider evidence of domestic violence. Rish was convicted of helping with the plot hatched by Danny Edwards to kidnap Small for ransom. Edwards took Small to a rural area and buried him in a 6-by-3-foot wooden box outfitted with an air pipe, but Small suffocated. Rish has maintained her innocence saying Edwards had threatened to kill her and her son if she didn’t help him.