Let's not give Haley Barbour too much praise about the Pardon of the two women in prison for 20 yrs

[Mira]

A Reality Check on Haley Barbour's Pardon of the two women in prison for 20 years Updated at 3:01 PM

http://www.theroot.com/views/scott-sisters-freed

Haley Barbour, Mississippi's governor, wants everyone to believe he is the good guy in the case of two black women who have spent nearly 20 years in prison because of an $11 robbery that they may not have even committed.
Once the heat over his recent civil rights flap got a little too warm for his big backside, Barbour generously decided that they should be released on the condition that one donates a kidney to the other.

The judge who essentially sentenced the Scott sisters, Jamie and Gladys, to life in prison was downright lenient in 2005 when it came to sentencing one of the ringleaders of the lynching of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964 -- Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney. That despicable human being was given 60 years -- 20 years for each murder? -- but left free while appealing his conviction.

As Nina Simone would say if she were still among us and seeing what Judge Marcus Gordon has wrought, "Mississippi, goddam!"

The NAACP, which has pushed hard for the release of the Scotts, is grateful that Jamie and Gladys are about to be freed (the process may take 45 days), but the NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, as well as other civil rights organizations -- and especially individual lawyers like Chokwe Lumumba -- want this kind of miscarriage of justice to never happen again.

The Scott sisters, like the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama decades ago, have learned all about rural Southern justice and the politics that control that justice. We must learn from this. And in 2010 and beyond, we must mean it when we say, "Never again!" Let's keep up with these sisters once they are on the outside; being symbols is not enough. Oprah, do you hear me? Reverends, do you hear me? Imams, do you hear me? Greeks, do you hear me? Professional athletes, do you hear me?

Barbour is not only a governor; he is the former national chair of the Republican Party and heads the GOP Governors Association. He clearly has his eyes on the 2012 race against President Obama or whoever is the Democratic candidate. So he's counting on black folks giving him some love -- and votes -- for releasing Gladys and Jamie Scott.

for the whole article go to:
http://www.theroot.com/views/scott-sisters-freedE.R . Shipp, A Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, is a Southerner based in New York

[Angry Dragon]

1. He did it to save money

It was costing the state $190,000/yr for dialysis and then add in the cost of the transplant
that they would have had to do to save a life

Now these women will have to pay the costs themselves