The story of the Scott Sisters, Gladys and Jamie, was a shining example of excess. For leading two men into an $11 robbery, the two sisters were sentenced to life in prison. Sixteen years gone by and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour has put an end to their imprisonment. But not without a twist.
From the Washington Post :
To be fair, the application for clemency offered Jamie’s kidney for her sister, a natural act of kindness between siblings. And Barbour took her up on it , providing:Barbour said he decided to suspend the sentences in light of the poor health of 38-year-old Jamie Scott, who requires regular dialysis. The governor asserted that 36-year-old Gladys Scott’s release is contingent on her giving a kidney to her inmate sibling.
“The Mississippi Department of Corrections believes the sisters no longer pose a threat to society,” Barbour said in a statement. “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.”
“Gladys Scott’s release is conditioned on her donating one of her kidneys to her sister, a procedure which should be scheduled with urgency.”
As noted at Sentencing Law & Policy, executive clemency, while generally an act of sovereign mercy above the limits of the law, is still subject to some constitutional limitations. For example, what if clemency was granted contingent on the prisoner becoming the executive’s personal sex slave? What if the applicant offered to be the executive’s sex slave in exchange for commutation? What if the applicant offered his minor daughter as sex slave in exchange? It gets worse from here.
It’s unlikely that this situation will end up being a problem due to the combination of Gladys Scott having offered her kidney in the application together with the natural inclination of one sibling to donate an organ to help another. It would be fair to assume that Gladys would give Jamie her kidney regardless of whether it was an express requirement of clemency.
Yet the case does test the limits, both of the constitutionality of conditions imposed on clemency, as well as bioethics.
Even though Gladys Scott proposed the idea in her petition for an early release and volunteered to donate the organ, [director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, Arthur] Caplan said, it is against the law to buy and sell organs or to force people to give one up. “When you volunteer to give a kidney, you’re usually free and clear to change your mind right up to the last minute,” he said. “When you put a condition on it that you could go back to prison, that’s a pretty powerful incentive.”
From the biomedical perspective, can the offer of a kidney ever be considered volitional, an act of free and unfettered choice, once it’s the quid pro quo for release?
Consider what would/could/should happen if a prisoner offered his kidney to the governor’s dying daughter in exchange for release. It’s not really a far-fetched notion, and it’s not like the prisoner doesn’t have another kidney.
What complicates this act of mercy (or mercenary, if the cost of keeping Jamie alive was more important to Barbour than the monumentally harsh sentence of life in prison for an $11 robbery) is that the grant expressly requires the kidney transplant. If it was offered, even expected, but not incorporated as a requirement, there would be no issue when Gladys gives her kidney to her sister. But now, it’s a specific requirement. What if Gladys changes her mind? Do the Scott Sisters go back to prison to serve out the remainder of their lives? It would appear so.
From the results perspective, it’s a wonderful thing that Gladys and Jamie Scott’s sentencing nightmare is over, a return of proportionality to a system run amok. That there’s a kidney involved, between sisters, won’t generate another round of outrage.
And yet this result will always be tainted by the price of a kidney. Rather than remedying an injustice, a ridiculously excessive sentence long believed to be a reflection of racism against the Scott Sisters, this could be the start of a market in prisoner organs in exchange for freedom. Or worse.
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“What if clemency was granted contingent on the prisoner becoming the executive’s personal sex slave?” That’s crazy talk. As Radley Balko has pointed out elsewhere, Gov. Barbour isn’t nearly that demanding. He’s already pardoned (or otherwise released) several convicted murderers, apparently not because they were unjustly sentenced, but because they were part of a prison trusty program that had them working at the governor’s mansion. I’m sure the Scott sisters could have worked out a deal for some light housekeeping.
You scoff, but that’s pretty much why Rudy Giuliani picked Bernie Kerik as New York City police commissioner.
Every account of this story I have read keeps making much of the fact that these two morons got life in prison for “robbing a man of 11 dollars”. So we’re supposed to….what? Base sentences on the size of the haul the robbers got? It was armed robbery, period. It can be debated whether the penalty for armed robbery is commensurate with the crime,but the fact they only got 11 dollars only proves how stupid these two women are for not checking out their victim more throughly before doing something this rash. They ought to be kept locked away for sheer ignorance.
I say the state should pay for the kidney transplant and then let the sisters go. Life in prison for a robbery? Are we crazy?
You win for stupidest comment of the December, 2010. Not the year though, as stupid as this comment is.
I wonder how many white folk in Mississippi were sentenced to life for any kind of armed robbery. Maybe you could do the research on good old boys who got 11 in an armed robbery and get back to us. If it’s less than all of them….?
As a former kidney donor, I agree wholeheartedly with your comments. Right up to the last moment I had the concern that something could happen. Using the WHAT IF statement: Horrible though it would be, what if something went terribly wrong hours before the transplant and the operation could not take place? Does she go back to prison? I don’t mean she backed out, what if there were other circumstances which prohibited the transplant from taking place? If Jamie were to have a fever, the operation would not take place. If Gladys were to get a kidney infection, the operation would not take place. Any number of things can happen and do Jamie and Gladys suffer because of this?
Why are the people of the State not up in arms about this sentence to begin with? Why did the Governor make organ transplantation a condition of release? As this blog states, it opens the door to all kinds of crazy ideas for people to get out of prison. This transplant should take place because the sisters want it to, not because of the commutation of the sentence, but the sentence needed to be commuted, anyway. Murders do not get life in prison, they get anywhere from 5 – 20 years. Let’s be realistic!
The governor stated his reason for granting clemency which was that it cost the state too much to provide kidney dialysis.
So are we at the point where convicted criminals can get a free pass if they have a sick sibling who needs a transplant?
If the state can’t afford to keep criminals in prison according to the laws of the state, will future laws be changed to decrease crimes of armed robbery or other types of crimes to mere misdeameaner’s with small fines or community service sentences?
Should we just ignore certain crimes so the burden on the taxpayer is lessened?
I think you’ve confuse his excuse with his purpose. There’s nothing about his clemency of the Scott Sisters to suggest that he would grant it to any other sick inmates, but rather use this to justify clemency in this case so he doesn’t have to concede that their sentence was shockingly and ridiculously harsh.
In other words, you don’t have to worry that the streets of Mississippi will be overrun by dialysis-challenged criminals.