Friday, Jan. 7, marked another milestone in Mississippi’s checkered history. It will forever be remembered as the day the Scott Sisters were released from prison.
Gladys and Jamie Scott, the sisters whose life prison sentences were suspended by Gov. Haley Barbour late last year said they are ‘grateful and blessed’ after being released last Friday.
“It’s been a long, hard road, but we made it. There were times when we wanted to give up, but I told my sister…I said, we are going to make it, we’re coming up out of here, we’re not going to die,” said Gladys at an afternoon press conference.
Barbour suspended the sisters’ sentences on the condition that Gladys, 36, donate a kidney to Jamie, 38, within one year of their release, a condition that their lawyers said he would continue to fight. “I don’t think this stipulation would hold up in any court of law in this country,” said Chokwe Lumumba, attorney for the sisters. “We will continue our efforts for a full pardon of Gladys and Jamie.”
Jamie Scott has kidney disease and requires daily dialysis. At the press conference she appeared weak. “I’m real weak, but like I say, it’s like a dream, I can’t wake up right now,” she said. “I never thought this day would come that I would be on the outside of the walls where I’ve been bound for so long. Now I’m out where I can get more decent medical treatment.”
When asked by a reporter if she decided to give her sister one of her kidneys just to get out of prison, Gladys responded, “Whether I was released because of that I don’t know, but I was going to give it to her anyway,” she said. “This was my decision and I was going to do it in prison because I did not want my sister to die.”
The sisters who were 19 and 21 when they were ordered to prison were accused of masterminding the robbery of two men on a roadside in Forest, Miss. No one was injured, and the gun allegedly used in the robbery was never found.
The sisters were convicted of two counts of armed robbery and sentenced to two life sentences.
The sisters, who continue to maintain their innocence and had no previous records, claimed that the African American boys – two brothers and a cousin – had been coerced into testifying against them.
With their new found freedom the Scott Sisters are on a mission to help. “I made a lot of friends in that facility and a lot of those ladies don’t have voices and I want to be that voice for them, said Jamie. “So I will be back in Mississippi one day soon.”
“I want to counsel young people about staying in school,” said Gladys. “I think I have been called to do that.”
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