Two imprisoned sisters whose sentences were dropped on the condition that one donate her kidney to the other have been released from jail in Mississippi.<\/p>\n
The pair, who had been in jail for 16 years, are moving to the US state of Florida, where their family lives.
\nJamie Scott requires daily dialysis, which costs the state roughly $200,000 (\u00a3129,000) per year, officials said.
\nShe and her sister Gladys Scott were convicted in 1994 of taking part in a robbery that netted a mere $11 (\u00a37).
\nMississippi Governor Haley Barbour agreed to release the sisters, who were serving life sentences for leading two men into an ambush in Mississippi in 1993, on the condition that Gladys, 36, donates a kidney to her sister within one year.
\nGladys, who came up with the idea for the transplant, volunteered to donate her kidney to 38-year-old Jamie in her petition for early release.
\nFight for pardon
\nAt a press conference on Friday, the sisters said that although they were not bitter about having been imprisoned, they were still seeking a pardon from the state of Mississippi.
\n“The fight is not over. We have to now fight for this pardon,” Jamie said.
\nThe two walked out of the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in the town of Pearl at just after 0800 local time (1400GMT) on Friday morning and were greeted by their mother and grown children.
\nMr Barbour has said prison officials no longer think the sisters, who are eligible for parole in 2014, are a threat to society.
\nThe women’s lawyer, Chokwe Lumumba, said the two hoped to apply for government-funded health insurance, begin planning for the transplant and start seeking a pardon from the governor.
\n“A lot of people said the governor did it just for political purposes. You know that we did it for political purposes, too – to champion the human rights of these two women and to champion the human rights of oppressed people around the world,” he said.
\nMr Lumumba then added that two rights groups, the NAACP and ACLU, had played a large role in the release of the sisters.
\nHundreds of protesters marched through the Mississippi capital of Jackson in September, calling for the women’s release from prison – criticising their sentences as harsh.
\nThere is currently no date set for the kidney transplant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two imprisoned sisters whose sentences were dropped on the condition that one donate her kidney to the other have been released from jail in Mississippi. The pair, who had been in jail for 16 years, are moving to the US state of Florida, where their family lives. Jamie Scott requires daily dialysis, which costs the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n