Local event featuring new book chronicling recovery from double life sentences
By Stephanie R. Jones
Contributing Writer
Jamie and Gladys Scott were scheduled to be in Jackson for a signing of their recently released book, but their probation officer in Pensacola, Fla., said they could not come.
The Scott sisters, who were released from prison in 2011 due to a suspension of the life prison sentences by then Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, have traveled outside Florida many times since they moved to Pensacola in 2010 – including to Jackson and other parts of Mississippi.
But they were denied permission to come for an engagement hosted by the Chokwe Lumumba Center for Economic Democracy & Development, 939 Capitol St., on Aug. 8, to discuss their book, “The Scott Sisters: Resurrecting Life from Double Life Sentences.”
“We’ve been traveling back and forth to Mississippi,” said Jamie Scott. “We’ve been all over the country, to Orlando, Philadelphia (Pa.), Atlanta and other places. We were just in Jackson in June. But this time, they said we could not go to Jackson.”
Jamie and Gladys, 19 and 21 years old at the time, were convicted of a 1993 armed robbery, getting them $11 in Forest, Miss. Both sisters received double life sentences, an outcome that was criticized as too severe by a number of human and civil rights activists and prominent commentators.
In the lead of this outcry were Atty. Chokwe Lumumba, the late mayor of Jackson, and The Free the Scott Sisters Committee. The sisters had no previous criminal records before the 1993 event.