Day Thirty – Shouldn't the sentence fit the crime?

I know I just wrote a blog last night about NOT being able to write a quick on the fly blog, but today I am livid with an article I read on CNN regarding two sisters in Mississippi who have been released after serving 16 years in prison. Yes, you read that right, released….not paroled not pardoned but released, guess what their crime was? They “lured” two men to an ambush area where the men were robbed by three teenagers who hit them with a shotgun and took $11.00. Yes, $11.00. The two sisters were convicted of armed robbery, while the three teenagers received lesser sentences and have already been released. And guess what else? The Governor of Mississippi is proud to have been able to “suspend their sentences indefinitely.” REALLY? PROUD? I would be embarrassed and ashamed for not having PARDONED them sooner. 16 years in jail for $11.00, Michael Vick served less time than that and we all know what that Mo’Fo did!

But wait, it gets better…one of the conditions of the suspension is that one sister has to donate a kidney to the other sister who is on dialysis. That’s what it really boils down to, is the money for the dialysis, if that woman did not have a kidney problem they would not be eligible for parole until 2014! It sickens me to know that injustices like this continue to occur in this day and age. Those women should probably have spent no more than six months in jail, then parole and then it’s over. Instead 16 years later, they still sit in jail waiting for the paperwork to be processed.

“We need more days like this in Mississippi,” NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said at a news conference Thursday at the State Capitol building in Jackson. “We need more days like this in our country.”

Really, I think not. I don’t think there should be any pride in this debacle, instead the state of Mississippi, their governor, their parole board and the NAACP should be ashamed and embarrassed that this didn’t happen 15 years ago.