🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Jamie Scott, whose kidney failure spurred the granting of early release from a controversial life prison sentence, then went on to become an advocate for justice, died November 9 of COVID-19.
Scott and her sister, Gladys, were charged in a 1993 armed robbery that netted a small amount of money. They denied their involvement in the crime, which also led to the conviction of three young men. The men implicated the sisters as part of a plea deal and none spent more than three years in jail, according to the Jackson Free Press.
After trial, the Scott sisters, convicted of planning the crime, were sentenced to life in prison.
Failing health, and a continued push from the public, helped free them both. Jamie Scott was 21 at the time of the sentencing. Gladys was 19 and pregnant. After 17 years in prison, then-Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour granted Jamie Scott early release from prison because of her illness and also let Gladys Scott go on the condition she donates a kidney to her sister.
Gladys Scott agreed. The transplant occurred in 2019.
The two went on to form an organization called Sisters of Hope and become advocates for justice who focused on community work.
"We don't want to leave this world and be known as the Scott sisters, the ones whose case became nationwide," Jamie Scott told a Florida television station in 2020. "I want to be known as the person that helped the community; our children need their education."
One of their recent efforts included handing out masks to every child at Montclair Elementary in Pensacola, Florida, as they went back to school in 2020.
"Some people may look at a mask as not being important, but for us, it's between life or death," Jamie Scott said at the time.
Jamie Scott was 49.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
"My sister was a fighter every day of her life, and I will continue her fight not only for her — not just for what she stood for and what she went through — but for what she and I represent, for what others have gone through and are still going through," Gladys Scott said in a statement. "The fight's not over until everyone is treated with dignity, respect, and justice."
The sisters' attorney and advocacy groups argued that the life sentences they both received were excessive given the amount stolen.
