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Zhuge Liang
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Sisters leave Mississippi prison after kidney deal
By Leigh Coleman
PEARL, Miss. | Fri Jan 7, 2011 9:45pm IST
PEARL, Miss. (Reuters) - Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour freed two sisters on Friday from a state prison where they were serving life sentences for an $11 armed robbery on condition that one donate a kidney to the other.
The sisters, Gladys and Jamie Scott, smiled and waved as they emerged from Central Mississippi Correctional Facility after 16 years in prison.
"Thank you, thank you," they shouted as they were driven in a light blue car past crowds of supporters who had come from as far away as Canada to witness their release in the culmination of a long campaign for their freedom.
Barbour, a Republican who is considering whether to run for U.S. president in 2012, suspended their sentences on condition that Gladys Scott, 36, donate a kidney to her ill sister, Jamie, 38, who requires dialysis.
The sisters were convicted of robbing at gunpoint two men who were driving them to a nightclub in northern Mississippi in 1993. They had no prior criminal record. Each was sentenced to two life terms.
Barbour, chairman of the Republican Governor's Association, said this week one reason for his decision to order their release was that Jamie Scott's kidney dialysis and treatment was a financial burden on the state.
Michael Shapiro, chief of organ transplantation at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, has criticized the decision to impose a condition for the release as unethical and possibly illegal.
(Editing by Matthew Bigg, Jerry Norton and Will Dunham)
