Sixteen years ago, two sisters, Jamie Scott, now 38, and Gladys Scott, now 36, entered a Mississippi state prison to begin serving two life sentences for an armed robbery that netted the participants all of eleven dollars. Gov. Haley Barbour suspended the sentences on Wednesday, but Gladys Scott's release is contingent on her giving one of her kidneys to her older sister who requires daily dialysis, a procedure that is costing Mississippi a lot of money.
In 1993, the sisters had lured two men into an ambush by three male teenagers who robbed the victims by smacking them in the head with a shotgun.
The life sentences given to the sisters infuriated the black community. Many demonstrations have been held in which the NAACP and black 'community leaders' protested the harsh sentences for an $11 dollar robbery.
Those protesters missed the point. If they had bellyached about the life sentences solely because the sisters did not have an arrest record, they would have been right. But to protest the sister’s sentences because the robbery netted only $11 is a crock of shit!
$11 or $11 million, what the fuck is the difference? Jamie and Gladys Scott were not convicted for stealing a few dollars, but for an armed robbery in which the two victims were beaten with a shotgun. It's not the amount of money that matters - it's the crime. And that was a very serious offense, even more so for the victims.
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