A 72-year-old woman imprisoned for over half a century was released after her life sentence was commuted
January 08, 2026
The Philadelphia Inquirer: “For the first time in more than half a century, Marie Scott is free.
Scott, 72, who served more than 52 years in prison for felony murder, was released from custody on Wednesday after Gov. Josh Shapiro commuted her life sentence in June. Despite opposition from the victim’s family, community advocates had pushed for her freedom for years, saying she had served enough time, was a model inmate, and no longer posed a threat to society.
Scott, known as ‘Mechie,’ has been incarcerated since 1973, after she and her then-16-year-old boyfriend, Leroy Saxton, robbed a Germantown gas station. She was 19 and addicted to heroin when she helped Saxton restrain the cashier, Michael Kerrigan, and then rummage through the store’s cash register and safe. Her attorneys say she was acting as a lookout when — to her surprise, she says — Saxton shot Kerrigan, 35, in the back of the head.
Saxton was later convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Scott was convicted of felony murder and handed the same fate.
But Saxton was released on time served in 2020 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned mandatory life sentences for juveniles.
Scott had remained behind bars ever since.
Until Wednesday, when hours before dawn, she walked out of her cell in State Correctional Institutional Muncy for the final time, stepped into the back of a van, and was driven three hours toward her new life in Philadelphia.
There, for the first time in her life, she hugged her daughter, Hope Segers, outside the prison walls.
‘I just covered my face and lost it,’ Scott said of seeing her Wednesday. ‘That was the first time I have seen my daughter and grandson in the real world. … To feel them, to smell them in the free air.'”