On Feb. 18, 2015, Cindy Kaye Henderson Reese shot her husband in the head moments after the couple got home from church and dinner at Milo’s.

After killing Michael Reese, she went to Piggly Wiggly to buy groceries and returned to the Morris house, turned the coffee table upside down as part of an attempt to stage a robbery and then finally called 911.

Within a month, Reese was charged with murder, alongside her then-boyfriend and pastor, Jeffery David Brown. Ultimately, Brown pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received a 20-year prison sentence as part of his plea agreement to testify against Reese.

Reese, in 2017, was found guilty in her husband’s slaying and sentenced to four decades in prison.

Michael Reese

But two months ago, less than three years into Reese’s 40-year sentence, she was moved from Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women to a work-release program in Birmingham. The center is within walking distance to those who had investigated and prosecuted her, within a short drive to Michael Reese’s still-grieving family and the transfer was carried out without notification to any of them about what had been decided.

It was just in recent days that news of Reese’s transfer made its way to lawmen and the victim’s relatives. They were stunned, and outraged.

“It makes me sick, to be honest with you,’’ said Earl Reese, Michael Reese’s father.

“The jury and judge heard evidence of this woman planning a murder of her husband and then she carried out the plan in an execution-style killing,’’ said Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr. “The judge at the time sentenced the defendant to 40 years to serve in prison after a five-day trial and 90-minute jury deliberation.”

“The judge considered all of the evidence in the trial, along with testimony about what a decent and kind man Michael Reese was,’’ Carr said. “It’s a travesty of justice that this woman would be allowed to serve the remainder of her sentence outside a prison and in a work center as DOC has allowed. It’s a disgrace that our state would consider this new placement after only serving less than three years of her sentence.”

“The offender never admitted what she did,’’ said Jefferson County sheriff’s Capt. David Agee. “Our detectives worked very hard to prove this case and to see her out on work release this soon is disheartening.”

Late Wednesday afternoon, the Alabama Department of Corrections told AL.com that Reese has not been assigned to any work details in the community and her time at the work center is temporary. “The ADOC is in the process of relocating the inmate to a non-work-release correctional facility,’’ said prison spokesman Bob Horton.

Asked whether the plan to move Reese out of work release stemmed from the concerns voiced by the victim’s family and prosecutors, Horton said, “The ADOC considered the public’s concern in its decision to move the inmate from the Birmingham Work Release Center, although she was not working outside the facility.”

Reese, who was convicted by a jury on Dec. 2, 2016, testified in the week-long trial and claimed that she loved her husband and never told anyone she wanted him dead.

Brown also took the stand. He said Reese often talked about killing her husband and even asked Brown to hire someone to kill Michael Reese. Brown did attempt to hire two men for the killing, but they refused. Brown claimed Reese discussed poisoning her husband on multiple occasions.

While Brown denied that he and Reese were in a physical relationship, Reese said she and Brown had sex on multiple occasions.

The Court of Criminal Appeals in 2017 denied Reese’s direct appeal. Specifically, Reese’s appeal stated the circuit court should have acquitted her because prosecutors did not have sufficient evidence to show she killed Michael Reese. Her appeal also stated the court should have given the jury instructions on a manslaughter charge, and that the court failed to give correct jury instructions on complicity. The appeals court denied each of her claims.

Reese’s attorney, John Robbins, did not immediately provide a comment for this story.

In April, Reese’s prison classification was changed to “Minimum-out.” Under that classification explanation on the ADOC website, that classification is “appropriate for inmates that do not pose a significant risk to self or others and suitable to be assigned off-property work details without the direct supervision of correctional officers. Inmates must remain in prison clothing at all times and work is generally assigned to only government positions (i.e. city, county, ADOC, ADOT, etc.).Inmates in this custody are generally assigned to Community Work Centers (CWC) with higher security facilities only maintain a small number of job assignments requiring minimal supervision.”

Michael Reese’s family found out about Reese’s move when a family member overheard a conversation among some county workers. “It is very painful,’’ said the victim’s sister, Tiffany Reese Burkes. “To be honest, it’s hard to wrap my head around,”

“It’s been very disheartening,’’ she said. “We miss Michael truly. She ruthlessly took somebody away from everybody for no reason.”

Though it appears Reese will be moved out of work release, those involved with case said they are still angered by what transpired.

“The bad part about it, I was not informed at all. We haven’t received anything. Two months and we weren’t aware of it,’’ Earl Reese said. “It just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. The woman killed somebody. “

“After she was convicted, we changed all of our locks. Who is to say she doesn’t have a grudge against us?,’’ he said. “The whole time she was out on bond, we worried. They were free as birds for over a year.”

“It‘s very upsetting. Everyone I have talked to has the same reaction - they couldn’t believe it,’’ Earl Reese said. “What is our judicial system coming to?”

Jefferson County Chief Deputy District Attorney Joe Roberts called even a temporary move to work release “outrageous and a travesty of justice.”

“Cindy Reese murdered the victim in this case by shooting him in the back of the head. She essentially executed him,’’ Roberts said.

“The Alabama Department of Corrections, based upon some rules or regulations that they passed themselves, made a unilateral decision to allow the defendant to go to a work center less than three years after her sentencing,’’ he said. “I cannot fathom how a convicted murderer serving 40 years in prison was even considered for a move to a work center much less allowed to in fact move to a work center.”

“The salt in the wound in this case is that this was done without notifying the victim’s family, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office or the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office,’’ he said. “It shocks the conscience that the ADOC can overrule all the hard work of the JCSO and DA’s Office, overrule the verdict that the jury rendered and overrule the sentence imposed by the judge who heard the evidence in the trial.”

“If Cindy Reese, who is serving a 40-year sentence, is not in a jail cell in Tutwiler it makes you wonder who is actually in the jail cells there. The DA’s Office has reached out to ADOC to ask them to please correct this injustice, but we have not heard back from them,’’ Roberts said. “Cindy Reese should be in a prison cell for a long time - end of story. Citizens must be able to trust that dangerous individuals who are sentenced to long prison sentences will stay there. The ADOC has failed the citizens of Jefferson County.”

“Although ADOC never returned our call we have heard that they have now decided to move the defendant back to a non-work release correction facility,’’ he said. “While that is obviously the right decision it does not explain how this type of decision was made in the first plan or assure the public that this type of injustice will not happen again.”