‘Kidney deal’ sisters freed from life sentences

TWO jailed sisters whose life sentences were suspended on the condition that one donates a kidney to the other have been released from a Mississippi prison.

Jamie and Gladys Scott waved to reporters as they left the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in a vehicle after serving 16 years of their sentence.

They are moving to Florida, where their mother and grown children live.

Jamie, 36, is on dialysis, which officials say costs the state about $200,000 (€150,000) a year.

Governor Haley Barbour agreed to release her because of her medical condition. But 38-year-old Gladys’s release order says she must donate the kidney within one year.

The idea to donate the kidney was Gladys’s, and she volunteered to do it in her petition for early release.

Jamie and Gladys Scott were given life sentences for their involvement in a 1993 armed robbery in Scott County that netted only $11.

The sisters became symbols of the heavy- handed sentences handed to African Americans and the influential civil rights group NAACP engaged in a long-standing campaign to secure their release.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour suspended the sisters’ sentences late on Wednesday ahead of a meeting with the president of the NAACP.

“Their incarceration is no longer necessary for public safety or rehabilitation, and Jamie Scott’s medical condition creates a substantial cost to the state of Mississippi,” Barbour said in a statement.

The sisters waved to reporters and yelled “we’re free” and “God bless y’all” as they left prison.