‘Kidney sisters’ freed from prison

Jamie, foreground, and Gladys Scott leaving the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility 
in Pearl, Mississippi, today. (AP Picture)

FRI, JANUARY 07, 2011 - 12:45 PM

PEARL, Mississippi — Two sisters whose life sentences were suspended on the condition that one donate a kidney to the other were released from a Mississippi prison on Friday after serving 16 years for an armed robbery.

Jamie and Gladys Scott waved to reporters and yelled "we're free" and "God bless y'all" as they left the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in a vehicle.

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

Jamie Scott, 36, is on dialysis, which officials say costs the state about $200,000 a year.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour agreed to release her from prison because of her medical condition, but 38-year-old Gladys Scott's release order says one of the conditions she must meet is to donate the kidney within one year.

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

Their freedom will allow not only for a reunion with family, but also with each other. The two women have been held recently in different parts of the prison in Pearl, and it's unlikely they had much interaction in the sprawling complex of 13 housing units on 171 acres (69 hectares).

The Scotts were convicted in 1994 of an armed robbery in central Mississippi the year before. The robbery didn't net much; amounts cited have ranged from $11 to $200.

Lumumba said the women hope to get government-funded health insurance in Florida and begin the needed steps to make the transplant happen. He said a few doctors have expressed interest in performing the kidney transplant, but there are no firm plans yet. And the sisters need to undergo testing to make sure they are compatible. (AP)