On Condition of Release

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is in the news again. He has been under pressure from the national and Mississippi NAACP to grant early releases to Jamie and Gladys Scott, two sisters serving unusually long prison sentences for armed robbery. This week he did it.  Their sentences will be suspended. However, there is a twist to this story:  Jamie Scott, 38 requires regular dialysis. In a statement, the governor said Glady’s release is “conditional” on her donating a kidney to her sister.  No get-out-of-jail-free card, here.

By all accounts, the incarceration terms for these young, African-American women from Mississippi were particularly harsh. They have each already served 16 years of a life sentence. From the Washington Post:

The sisters were convicted of luring two men into an armed robbery that netted $11. Their three teenage accomplices, who hit each man in the head with a shotgun and took their wallets, have served their sentences and been released.

The national and Mississippi NAACP had been working for much of the year to win the release of the Scotts, who would have come up for parole in 2014. Barbour, who is weighing a run for president, announced his decision a week after he ran afoul of civil rights advocates.

The NAACP is happy:

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, who met with Barbour about the sisters' case, said the governor's office has made it clear Gladys Scott will not go back to prison if her kidney is not a match. Both sisters will follow traditional parole release procedures.

"This is a shining example of how governors should use their commutation powers," he said.

Medical ethicists, not so happy:

Dr Michael Shapiro, the chief of organ transplants at Hackensack University medical centre in New Jersey and chair of the ethics committee at the united network for organ sharing, said the organ transplant should not be a condition of release.

"The simple answer to that is you can't pay someone for a kidney," Shapiro said. "If the governor is trading someone 20 years for a kidney, that might potentially violate the valuable consideration clause."

The valuable consideration clause is meant to prohibit the buying or selling of organs. Shapiro said the Scott sisters' situation could violate that rule because it could be construed as trading a thing of value – freedom from prison – for an organ.

And then again, this might be all about the bottom line.

Jamie Scott's kidney dialysis treatment creates a substantial cost to the state, said Barbour.

Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Christopher B. Epps, who agreed with the decision to suspend the sentences, said Jamie Scott's three-times-a-week dialysis costs the state about $190,000 a year.

The operation would be covered by Medicaid, with federal government dollars. And the sisters plan on living in Florida after release, so any additional medical care will not be on the back of Mississippi tax payers.

Somehow, I do believe that on an intellectual level Gov. Barbour thinks these women should be set free.  But, he is somehow unable to do it without condition.  And given the ethical (and perhaps legal) considerations, this story is not going to go away.  Can't wait to hear how Gov. Barbour's handlers unpack this one.  Much, much spinning to be done.  Following this story, and others that come out of the Mississippi Statehouse in the coming year should be very intriguing.