Posted on December 31, 2010

NAACP: Sisters’ Release Makes Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour ‘Shining Example’

Brad Knickerbocker, Christian Science Monitor, December 30, 2010

Just a week ago, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour was in hot water over an impolitic statement he made about the Citizens Council–the all-white group prominent during the 1960s when burning crosses and murdered civil rights workers were the main news out of his home state.

Today, Governor Barbour–frequently mentioned as a Republican candidate for the presidency in 2012–is being lauded as a “shining example” by the NAACP over another story that relates directly to the subject of race in the South.

On Thursday, Barbour suspended the life sentences of two black sisters who’d already served 16 years for an armed robbery that netted $11.

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This week, Barbour’s suspending indefinitely the sentences of Gladys and Jamie Scott is winning him plaudits from African-American leaders.

“This is a shining example of how governors should use their commutation powers,” said NAACP President Benjamin Jealous.

For years, critics (including the NAACP) have pointed to the Scott sisters’ case as unjust and possibly racially-tinged. Neither of the sisters, who were 20 and 21 at the time, had a prior criminal record. Three teenage boys involved in the armed robbery were sentenced to just two years and have since been released.

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Jamie Scott is in poor health and requires regular dialysis treatment. Gladys Scott has offered to donate a kidney to her sister.

Barbour’s order says “Gladys Scott’s release is conditioned on her donating one of her kidneys to her sister.”

“Jamie Scott’s medical condition creates a substantial cost to the state of Mississippi,” Barbour also noted. Releasing the sisters from prison would relieve the state of paying for Jamie Scott’s continued treatment.

While supporters of the Scott sisters applaud Barbour’s move, some medical ethicists are raising questions–including the appearance of coercion in which Gladys Scott finally wins release but only if she undergoes what can be risky surgery.

“While Governor Barbour probably meant nothing nefarious by this decision, what he did was unethical and possibly illegal,” Michael Shapiro, chief of organ transplantation at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, told the Reuters news agency. “He is unaware of the procedures of transplantation that include making sure donors are not coerced.”

“If either party could be turned down for medical concerns, the transplant team would feel pressured to continue with the transplant or send them back to prison,” Dr. Shapiro said. “It is a position they should not be put in.”

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