Frances Tuckerman Freeman, born in Boston Massachusetts in 1910, earned a degree in international law and government from Radcliffe College in 1931. She married Marius Jalet in 1935 with whom she had six children. In 1937, Jalet received her J.D. from Columbia Law School and later, in 1958, earned a masters degree in law from Georgetown University. She applied for and received a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law where she studied poverty law with fifty other lawyers in a special program sponsored by the Office of Economic Opportunity. Upon completion of the six-week course in 1967, Jalet moved to Austin, Texas and began her work for the Legal Aid and Defender Society of Travis County. Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) inmate, writ writer, Fred Arispe Cruz contacted Jalet to enlist her assistance in filing legal papers on his behalf. Shortly thereafter, Jalet began litigating for prisoners' rights, not only on Cruz's behalf but for other TDC inmates as well. Jalet worked as a legal aid lawyer in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and in New York and Illinois. She married Fred Cruz in 1972, after his release from prison. They divorced six years later. Frances Jalet-Cruz died in Connecticut in December 1994 at the age of 84.