How does one escape from prison? The Count of Monte Cristo spent years digging through stone walls. Andy Dufresne crawled through a sewage pipe in "Shawshank Redemption". But what if you want to escape right now and you have an aversion to swimming through human waste? Just have a kidney shut down. That will do the trick.
Mississippi Governor (and prospective presidential candidate) Haley Barbour accomplished the political equivalent of "having his cake and eating it, too" yesterday. He released the Scott sisters from prison thus pleasing his liberal constituency. Then, he noted that the state prison would save tons of money by avoiding dialysis and kidney transplant costs (Sister B planned to donate a kidney to Sister A) thus pleasing his conservative constituency.
The background on the case is interesting. The Scott sisters are 16 years into a life(!) sentence for armed robbery. A firearm was involved (This is Mississippi, after all), but no shots were fired,. no one was hurt, and the grand proceeds of the heist was a whopping $11. Apparently, this gets you a life sentence and no parole for 16 years (This is Mississippi, after all). And we thought that sort of thing only happened to Jean Valjean in 19th century France.
For a governor with national political ambitions, the Scott sisters were a problem. A life sentence for stealing $11 might seem a tad stiff to those Yankees up north. On the other hand, releasing them labels Governor Barbour as "soft on crime" and opens the possibility of another Willie Horton. Good things come to those who wait, though. Kidney failure was bad news for Ms Scott, but the political equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hat for The Guv.
Those Monte Cristo and Dufresne guys really did it the hard way. All they needed was a dire disease and an ambitious Governor.
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