She was sentenced to life in prison for murder at 19. Now 71 and with cancer, she faces roadblocks to early release.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/24/25: “Doreen Kerrigan Burgess will never forget what the teen robbers who shot and killed her father 51 years ago did to her family. But she can forgive them, she said — and even supports their release from prison.
Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections doesn’t share her view.
Marie Scott was 19 and addicted to heroin when she and Leroy Saxton, her then-16-year-old boyfriend, robbed a Germantown convenience store in 1973. Scott was acting as lookout when — to her surprise, she says — Saxton shot the cashier in the back of the head.
Michael Kerrigan, 35, left behind a wife and seven children, including Burgess, who was 11 years old at the time.
A jury convicted Scott of felony murder and she was ordered to spend the rest of her life in prison without the possibility of parole. Saxton, who pulled the trigger, was convicted of first-degree murder and was sentenced to the same fate.
But in 2020, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned mandatory life sentences for juveniles, Saxton — whose legal name is Benjamin Alston — was released on time served.
Scott, now 71, who uses a wheelchair and is suffering from Stage 2 breast cancer, remains behind bars.
In the more than half a century she has spent in prison, Scott, better known as ‘Mechie,’ has had only minor, nonviolent infractions on her record, save for three prison escapes more than 40 years ago. Since then, she has become a model inmate, her attorney Bret Grote said.”