Are We All Nuts?

When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.

Two sisters, both young single mothers, lured two men into a situation where the men were robbed at gunpoint, yet not harmed.  Those victims were hardly blameless.  Charges could have been directed at them, but weren’t.

The three men perpetrating the actual strong-arm-robbery of $11were given relatively short prison sentences, served them, and returned to society.  Whether bad, good, or indifferent, that’s how our society works.

Whatever happened to those two women though?  One might guess they were sentenced to a period of probation, or possibly a very limited time in jail as accessories to the crime.  Their part was limited, and didn’t involve any actual contact with weapons.  Would you believe they were each awarded two life in prison sentences?  What kind of justice is that?  How on earth can the girls who had a limited part in a robbery get a double life sentence, when the actual weapons-carrying perpetrators received only a short prison sentence?

Sixteen years later those girls were yet in prison, long after the gun-carrying-robbers were back on the streets.  The governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, found it in his heart to suspend their sentences.  However, there were strings attached.  One sister needed a kidney transplant, and they were freed only if the other sister gave her a kidney.

How many things can you find wrong with that situation?  First they possibly should have never spent a day in jail?  Second, they should have been freed at least 15 ½ years earlier.  Third, a suspension of sentence was not the correct procedure.  A full pardon would have been more proper.  Fourth, a gift of a body part should not be any part of a consideration involved with one’s freedom.  That is a form of a sale of body parts, and highly illegal in our society, as it should be.  Fifth, how stupid can that governor be to insist one sister must give a kidney to her sister, when it was not determined if it was even medically possible?  Sixth, in effect the sentences now became remarkably different.  One sister merely was released from prison.  The other was forced to give one of her kidneys for the same release.

When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose, except your freedom.