<html>
<body>
<font size=1>
<a href="http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/about/for-jamie-scott-an-11-robbery-in-mississippi-may-carry-a-death-sentence/" eudora="autourl">
http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/about/for-jamie-scott-an-11-robbery-in-mississippi-may-carry-a-death-sentence/</a>
<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">March 5<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>How an $11
Robbery in Mississippi May End in a Death Sentence <br><br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">The
Terrible Case of Jamie Scott
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By JAMES
RIDGEWAY <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">O</font><font size=3>n
February 25, a small crowd gathered outside the state capitol in Jackson,
Mississippi, to push for the release of sisters Jamie and Gladys Scott,
who are serving two consecutive life sentences apiece for a 1993 armed
robbery in which no one was injured and the take, by most accounts, was
about $11. Supporters of the Scott sisters have long tried to draw
attention to their case, as an extreme example of the distorted justice
and Draconian sentencing policies that have overloaded prisons, crippled
state budgets, and torn families apart across the United States. But in
recent months, their cause has taken on a new urgency, because for Jamie
Scott, an unwarranted life sentence may soon become a death
sentence.<br><br>
Jamie Scott, 38, is suffering from kidney failure. At the Central
Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) in Pearl, where Jamie and Gladys
are incarcerated, medical services are provided by a private contractor
called Wexford, which has been the subject of lawsuits and legislative
investigations in several states over inadequate treatment of the inmates
in its care. According to Jamie Scott’s family, in the six weeks since
her condition became life-threatening, she has endured faulty or missed
dialysis sessions, infections, and other complications. She has received
no indication that a kidney transplant is being considered as an option,
though her sister is a willing donor.<br><br>
Jamie Scott’s family and legal advisors believe the poor health care she
is receiving in prison places her life at risk. They have sent pleas for
clemency or compassionate release to Governor Haley Barbour, whose
tough-on-crime posturing and dubious record on issuing pardons do not
bode well for Jamie. The Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) has
a provision for what it calls “conditional medical release,” but Scott is
not a candidate, department spokesperson Suzanne Garbo Singletary said in
an email last week, because “MDOC policy provides that an inmate must
have a condition that is ‘incapacitating, totally disabling and/or
terminal in nature’ in order to qualify.” So Jamie Scott appears to be
caught in a deadly Catch-22: In order to be released from prison, she
must convince the MDOC that her illness is terminal or “totally
disabling”; but the only sure way for her to prove this is to die in
prison.<br><br>
Cruel and Unusual Health Care<br><br>
In telephone interviews earlier this week, the Scott sisters’ mother,
Evelyn Rasco, described the treatment Jamie has received at Central
Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF), based on her own observations
and information provided by her two daughters. Jamie, who has diabetes
and bouts of high blood pressure, said that medical staff at the prison
first diagnosed possible kidney problems in 1997–but until recently, she
received minimal treatment outside of her regular insulin. Jamie’s
physical and mental health suffered last fall when she spent 23 days in
solitary confinement (for being found in an “unauthorized area” in the
prison gym) and was cut off from her routine of work, classes, church,
and occasional visits with her sister. Then, in mid-January, Jamie became
seriously ill when both her kidneys began shutting down. She was sent to
the prison infirmary and, after a week’s delay, taken to the hospital.
There, doctors inserted a shunt in Jamie’s neck to allow her to receive
dialysis through a catheter, and she was promptly returned to
prison.<br><br>
Rather than letting Jamie Scott leave the prison regularly for dialysis,
prison authorities chose to truck in dialysis machines. About three times
a week, Jamie has received hemodialysis in a trailer on the prison
groundsif the machines are working properly, which she reports isn’t
always the case. At one session, Jamie told her mother, the blood was
flowing out of her through a catheter into the dialysis machinebut it
wasn’t flowing back in, so the treatment had to be stopped. At the end of
January, another inmate looked in on Jamie, who was locked up alone in
her cell, and found her unconscious. She was rushed to the hospital,
where doctors told her there were problems with the shunt inserted into
her neck. They made adjustments, and she was again taken back to prison.
<br><br>
Evelyn Rasco lives in Pensacola, Florida, where she cares for her
daughters’ five children while they are behind bars. Since Jamie and
Gladys went to prison, Rasco’s husband of 30 years died of a heart
attack; another daughter died of congestive heart failure; and her oldest
son was away for several years serving with the Army in Iraq. In a letter
to supporters last year, Jamie Scott wrote: “When I think of the word
‘strongest,’ I think of my mother. She is 4 feet 9 inches tall and has
the strength of Job in the Bible.”<br><br>
Rasco lacks the time and financial resources to visit her daughters
often, but in mid-February, she managed to make the trip to Mississippi.
When she visited the prison on February 18, along with Jamie’s
18-year-old son, Jamie was feeling sick but was able to make it to the
visiting room. When Rasco returned two days later, she found Jamie in a
cell attached to the infirmary. “She was real weak,” Rasco said. “She
couldn’t walk.” An infection appeared to have developed at the site of
Jamie’s catheter, which had filled with blood and pus. Nurses reportedly
told Rasco that Jamie should be in the hospital, but the paperwork hadn’t
been done.<br><br>
Rasco said that when she entered her daughter’s cell, Jamie was sitting
on the edge of a hospital bed with dirty linens, near a toilet and wash
bowl that had not been cleaned. Prison staff arrived with a plate of
fooda hamburger swimming in grease, some side dishes, and a cookie–but
Jamie said it looked so bad she couldn’t eat it. The doctors at the
hospital had given her a list of foods she should eat, including meat,
fish, and vegetables, but they were not available, and she did not have
permission to purchase food at the prison commissary. (That permission
has since been granted.) So Jamie sat on her grimy bed eating a Snickers
bar. “She sat right there with me,” Rasco said, “and tried to give me a
piece.” Knowing it was the only nourishment her daughter was likely to
have, her mother declined. <br><br>
Since Evelyn Rasco’s visit, Jamie was back in the hospital for a day
after experiencing chest pains following dialysis, and to a clinic where
her dialysis shunt was again adjusted and she was tested for infections.
To date, the family does not know the results.<br><br>
Evelyn Rasco also said that when Gladys Scott, 34, learned of her
sister’s kidney failure, she immediately offered to give Jamie a kidney.
If Gladys were to prove a viable match, this would be by far the best
medical option for Jamie: Studies show that patients in their thirties
who receive successful transplants live considerably longer than those
who remain on dialysis. Gladys says that CMCF staff told her that state
prisoners don’t qualify as donors, and that a transplant would be too
expensive, though there is no indication that their statements reflect
official MDOC policy. Rasco said that she was hoping the prison would at
least let Gladys to care for Jamiefeed her and bathe heras inmates are
sometime allowed to do for ailing relatives. When Rasco last spoke to
her, Gladys had not received the necessary permission.<br><br>
Chokwe Lumumba, a longtime activist and attorney who also serves on the
Jackson City Council, is representing the family in the medical matter.
In an interview last week, Lumumba said, “Our first idea is to get some
medical attention into the jail. Asking for a private doctor to go in
there and see her.” But what Jamie Scott really needs, he told me, is “to
be in hospital until a kidney transplant.”<br><br>
Suzanne Garbo Singletary, Director of the MDOC’s Division of
Communications, replied to several email inquiries regarding Jamie
Scott’s care. In one email, she wrote that “MDOC cannot comment on any
specific medical condition or treatment for an inmate.” In another, she
referred to patient privacy laws when asked whether a kidney transplant
was being considered for Jamie Scott. Regarding transplants for state
prisoners in general, Singltary said that “the state would pay for a
needed and necessary transplant” and would do so “when evaluated the Dr.
as needed [sic].” Singletary added in another message: “Dialysis units
are fully operational with no malfunctions documented in the past several
years.” She also restated the MDOC’s policy that “chronic, but stable,
medical conditions are not eligible for conditional medical release
consideration.” <br><br>
At the Central Mississippi Correctional Center, Jamie Scott’s care is in
the hands of Wexford Health Sources, a Pittsburgh-based private company
that provides prison medical services. According to information compiled
by the Private Corrections Working Group, Wexford’s record includes
lawsuits by prisoners and current or former employees in at least four
states, as well as allegations involving racial discrimination and
improper gifts to public officials. In 2006, the Santa Fe Reporter
launched an investigation into Wexford, which supplied health care to New
Mexico’s 6,000 prisoners. It discovered widespread complaints about
Wexford’s care. <br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>Those who have raised concerns about Wexford include the company’s
former regional medical director, the former medical director of Lea
County Correctional Facility (LCCF) in Hobbs and numerous former and
current Wexford medical employees. Their allegations are all hauntingly
similar:<br><br>
<dd>Wexford refuses to fill critical medical positions. Wexford refuses
to grant off-site visits for seriously ill inmates. Wexford refuses to
renew critical prescription medicine for inmates. And, according to those
who worked for the company, and some who still do, the company’s
insistence on the bottom line over the care of its charges causes inmates
to suffer, sometimes with lasting, even fatal, results.<br><br>
</dl>The investigation prompted hearings on prison health care in the New
Mexico state legislature, and in December 2006, after just two years with
Wexford, Governor Bill Richardson ordered the New Mexico Corrections
Department to find a new health care provider. <br><br>
Wexford’s reported resistance “to grant off-site visits for seriously ill
inmates,” is particularly relevant to the case of Jamie Scott, and the
potentially dangerous delays she has experienced before being sent to the
hospital. The same issue surfaced in a 2002 case in Pennsylvania, where a
26-year-old prisoner named Erin Finley suffered a fatal asthma attack in
prison while under Wexford’s care. According to the Wilkes Barre Times
Herald, Finley’s family eventually received a $2.15 million settlement,
after their lawyer presented evidence showing that “Finley desperately
sought medical care for severe asthma she had had since she was a child,
but she was repeatedly rejected based on a prison doctor’s belief that
she was ‘faking’ her symptoms.” On the day of her death, Finley was taken
to the prison infirmary several hours after complaining that she was
having trouble breathing. A physician’s assistant examined her and told
the doctor she needed to go to a hospital, “but he refused to see her and
left the prison at 2:40 p.m. Twenty minutes later, Finley lost
consciousness and stopped breathing,” according to the Times Herald.
Finally she was sent to the hospitalonly to be pronounced dead.
<br><br>
In Mississippi, where Wexford took over health care for the majority of
the state’s prisoners in 2006 under a three-year, $95 million contract,
the Jackson Clarion Ledger reported in November 2008 that “a search of
the federal court system found more than a dozen open lawsuits filed by
inmates against MDOC on medical issues.” At Central Mississippi
Correctional Facility–the prison where the Scott sisters are housedthe
sister of a dead inmate said she watched her brother waste away for
months from inadequately treated Crohn’s Disease, an inflammation of the
digestive tract. “He literally starved,” Charlotte Byrd said of her
brother William Byrd, who died in November 2008. “We watched him turn
into a skeleton.” Byrd told the Clarion Ledger that people might lack
sympathy for prisoners like her brother, a convicted rapist, but “Even a
dog needs medical attention.” She said she believes that “If they are
doing him that way, they are going to let somebody else die, too.”
<br><br>
In fact, Mississippi has one of the highest prisoner death rates in the
nation, according to a review of prison statistics carried out by the
Jackson Clarion Ledger’s Chris Joyner, and the death rate in 2007 was 34
percent higher than in 2006the year Wexford took over the MDOC’s medical
care. A December 2007 report conducted by the Mississippi Legislature’s
Joint Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER)
concluded that inmates were not receiving timely and adequate medical
treatment from Wexford. Among other things, the PEER report found that
Wexford “did not meet medical care standards set forth under its contract
with the state,” and that the company “did not adhere to its own
standards in following up on inmates with chronic health problems.” When
questioned about the report and the high prisoner death rates, the
Clarion Ledger reported, Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps “said he is
satisfied with the contractor’s performance.” The budget presented by
Epps for the coming fiscal year, which begins on July 1, 2010, shows a
request of $37.4 million to Wexford for medical services. <br><br>
In response to questions about care provided by Wexford, MDOC
spokesperson Suzanne Garbo Singletary wrote: “Jamie Scott is receiving
quality medical care for her condition. Wexford provides basic medical
care for all inmates at MDOC prisons. Inmates are sent to hospitals if
the need for hospital care arises.” Singletary stated that such decisions
are made by the attending doctor at the prison, who is a Wexford
employee. Wexford did not respond to requests for comment. <br><br>
Unpardonable Offenses<br><br>
Nancy Lockhart, a legal investigator and analyst based in South Carolina,
has been working with Evelyn Rasco for several years, organizing a
grassroots campaign to secure decent treatment for the Scotts and either
a review of their case or some provision for their early release. In
interviews last week, Lockhart said that she had helped Rasco appeal to
the Obama Justice Department, which informed her that the statute of
limitations was up for civil rights claims. They plan to try again,
offering proof of earlier letters to the DOJ. They have also organized
letter writing and email campaigns to numerous state and MDOC officials,
and set up a web site. The Scott sisters’ group of supporters is growing,
but they have received no meaningful responses to their pleas.<br><br>
During her recent visit to Mississippi, Evelyn Rasco had the opportunity
to confront Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps in person when she
attended a meeting at the state capitol on prison budget cuts. She
spotted the Epps, whom she recognized from his photograph, walked up to
him, and told him about her daughter’s poor health and the problems with
her medical treatment. According to Rasco, Epps said that he was getting
a lot of messages about Jamie Scott, and that he would do what he could
obtain a pardon or clemency for the Scott sisters. He told her that he
was “giving his word on this,” although he had no power to actually make
it happen himself.<br><br>
The person who could make it happen is Governor Haley Barbour, whose past
record on pardons does not bode well for Jamie and Gladys Scott. Barbour,
who took office in 2004, was initially known for refusing to grant any
pardons. In his second term he changed course–but only for a particular
set of offenders. A 2008 investigation by the Jackson Free Press found
that Barbour had pardoned or suspended the sentences of five murderers,
four of whom had killed their former or current wives or girlfriends. All
five men were part of a prison trusty program under which they did odd
jobs at the governor’s mansion. Writing in Slate, Radley Balko summarized
Haley Barbour’s policy on pardons as “show[ing] mercy only to murderers
who work on his house.” <br><br>
Jamie Scott’s health crisis has also coincided with a protracted struggle
between the governor and state legislators over how to handle budget
shortfalls. Throughout, the ambitious Barbour, who is talked about as a
possible 2012 presidential candidate, has appeared determined to polish
his reputation for being both fiscally conservative and tough on crime.
With revenue down due to the recession, Barbour implemented a series of
deep, across-the-board cuts to state spending in the current fiscal year.
Last week the he vetoed a bill that would have restored some of that
funding, primarily to education. At the same time, he asked the
legislature to put $16 million back into the Department of Corrections
budget. “We have the resources to restore funding to our priorities this
year,” the governor said in a statement, “including law enforcement and
corrections.” <br><br>
Against opponents who argued that Mississippi already spends more on
prisoners than it does on schoolchildren, Barbour held up the specter of
what could happen if prison spending was cut: 3,000 to 4,000 inmates
would have to be released early. “The threat of convicted criminals on
the streets,” the Jackson Free Press wrote earlier this month, “has
provided Barbour a rhetorical trump card in budget
negotiations.”<br><br>
Jamie and Gladys Scott<br><br>
Even amidst this kind of rhetoric, it would be difficult to see the Scott
sisters as dangerous or violent offenders, although the state of
Mississippi went to great lengths to depict them as such. On Christmas
Eve of 1993, Jamie and Gladys, then 22 and 19, were both young mothers
with no criminal records. They were at the local mini-mart buying heating
fuel when they ran into two young men they knew, who offered to give them
a ride. Sometime later that evening, the two young men were robbed by a
group of three boys, ages 14 to 18, who arrived in another car, armed
with a shotgun. <br><br>
Jamie and Gladys say that they had already left the scene to walk home
when the robbery took place, and had nothing to do with it. The state
insisted they were an integral part of the crime, and in fact had set up
the victims to be robbed. Wherever the truth lies, trial transcripts
clearly reveal a the case based on the highly questionable testimony of
two of the teenaged co-defendants–who had turned state’s evidence against
the Scott sisters in return for eight-year sentencesand a prosecutor who
appears determined to demonize the two young women.<br><br>
Jamie and Gladys Scott were not initially arrested for the crime. But ten
months later, the 14-year-old co-defendant–who had been in jail on remand
during that time–signed a statement implicating them. When questioned by
the Scotts’ attorney, the boy confirmed that he had been “told that
before you would be allowed to plead guilty” to a lesser charge, “you
would have to testify against Jamie Scott and Gladys Scott.” The boy also
testified that he had neither written nor read the statement before
signing it. It had been written for him by someone at the county
sheriff’s office, he said, and he “didn’t know what it was.” But he had
been told that if he signed it “they would let me out of jail the next
morning, and that if I didn’t participate with them, that they would send
me to Parchman [state penitentiary] and make me out a female”which he
took to mean he would be raped. The 18-year-old co-defendant who
testified against the Scott sisters also said he was testifying against
the Scotts as a condition of his guilty plea to a lesser charge.
<br><br>
But the prosecutor succeeded in depicting Jamie and Gladys Scott not only
as participants in the crime robbery, but as its mastermindstwo older
women who had lured three impressionable boys into the robbing the
victims at gunpoint. (This despite the fact that the oldest of the
co-defendants was just a year younger than Gladys, and was driving around
with a shotgun in his car.) In his summation, he told the jury:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>They thought it up. They came up with the plan. They duped three
young teenage boys into going along and doing something stupid that is
going to cost them the next eight years of their lives in the
penitentiary.<br><br>
<dd>That probably makes me, at least, as mad about this case, simply at
least as much, as the fact that two people got robbed. That three young
boys were duped into doing the dirty work.<br><br>
</dl>The prosecutor also reminded jurors that while Jamie and Gladys
Scott admittedly did not have a weapon, the judge’s instructions “tell
you that if they encourage someone else or counsel them or aid them in
any way in committing this robbery they are equally guilty.” <br><br>
It took the jury just 36 minutes to convict the Scott sisters. And while
there was a range of possible sentences for the crime of armed robbery,
the state asked forand receivedtwo consecutive life sentences for the
Scott sisters. In contrast, Edgar Ray Killen, the man convicted in 2005
of manslaughter in the 1964 deaths of civil rights workers Schwerner,
Cheney, and Goodman, received a sentence of 60 years–meted out by the
same judge who presided over the trial of Jamie and Gladys Scott. A
direct appeal, carried out by the same lawyers who defended them at
trial, failed to overturn the Scotts’ conviction. <br><br>
Because they were tried for a crime committed before October 1994, when
even harsher sentencing rules were put in place in Mississippi, the Scott
sisters will be eligible for parole in 2014, after they have served 20
yearsthough there is no guarantee they will receive it. In the meantime,
Evelyn Rasco is praying for mercy, for a good lawyerand for her daughter
Jamie to live that long.<br><br>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>James Ridgeway</b> can be reached
at</font><font size=3>
<a href="http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/">Solitary Watch</a>, where
this article originally appeared. <br><br>
<br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#008000">415 863-9977<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.Freedomarchives.org</a></font><font size=3> </font></body>
</html>