juvenile lifers

Michigan prisoners serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for crimes they committed as juveniles will receive resentencing hearings “as expeditiously as possible” and get rehabilitation programming that could increase their chances of parole.

That’s according to a settlement announced Wednesday between attorneys for the ACLU of Michigan and the state Attorney General over 163 “juvenile lifers” who are still awaiting resentencing.

The state House Judiciary Committee is considering changes to the law that requires juveniles charged with serious crimes in Michigan to be tried and sentenced as adults. There’s wide agreement the law doesn’t reduce future offenses, and it is costly to taxpayers.

Richard Griffin told the committee he turned his life around after being sentenced to 16 years to life in prison for a drug-related murder. He says other teenagers deserve the same chance.

Three Jackson County men who were serving life without parole for murders they committed as minors will be re-sentenced.

MLive reports that all three men — 42-year-old Stanley Fowle, 49-year-old Charles Porter, and 58-year-old Charles Finch — will have hearings scheduled for the coming weeks and months.

These re-sentencings come after a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which said states cannot impose mandatory sentences of life without parole on juveniles. In 2016, the Supreme Court added that the ruling applies retroactively to people already serving life.

 The Michigan Supreme Court says judges, not juries, have the sole power to decide whether someone under 18 gets life in prison without parole.

The 4-2 opinion, released Wednesday, centers on murder cases from St. Clair County and Genesee County. Many new sentencing hearings for so-called juvenile lifers have been on hold while a decision was in the works.

A federal appeals court appears to be on the side of Michigan prisoners seeking credit for good behavior.

A judge recently struck down a law that retroactively cut off good behavior or discipline credits for prisoners who were convicted of committing murder when they were teens. An appeals court on Wednesday declined the state's request to freeze that decision.

 A judge has struck down a law that bars some Michigan prisoners from getting credit for good behavior.

The decision could clear the way for faster parole hearings for prisoners who were convicted of murder when they were teens.

U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith says it was unconstitutional for lawmakers to retroactively cut off good behavior or discipline credits for juvenile lifers in homicides that occurred before 1999.

91 of Michigan’s 363 juvenile lifers have been re-sentenced, one year after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered states to do so.

Several Michigan prosecutors want to keep most or all their juvenile-lifer inmates behind bars despite Supreme Court rulings that say the punishment should be banned except for those rare offenders who are beyond rehabilitation.

A man in Michigan who was sentenced to life in prison without parole nearly 50 years ago as a teenager may soon be released.

The Herald-Palladium reports that at 17 years old, Bobby Gene Griffin was handed Michigan's then-automatic life without parole sentence for the 1967 murder of Minnie Peaples. The law has since changed, saying juveniles convicted of murder won't receive mandatory life sentences.

The Michigan appeals court has ordered a new sentence for a Kalamazoo teenager convicted of murder and suggested that he shouldn't be locked up for the rest of his life.

The court upheld the conviction of 16-year-old Victor Garay, saying the evidence in a 2014 gang-related shooting was "overwhelming." But the court said Tuesday that Judge Alexander Lipsey didn't handle the sentencing correctly.

Michigan Radio has been selected as a winner of a 2017 Wade H. McCree Award for the Advancement of Justice by the Michigan Press Association Foundation.  The station was recognized for the series, “Michigan’s Juvenile Lifers: Who gets a second chance?” The series, which aired in December, 2016, took a close look at how Michigan is following up on a landmark U.S.

The state Senate has adopted a criminal justice overhaul that aims to improve public safety by sending fewer people to prison. The 21 bills passed with almost unanimous support from Republicans and Democrats.

While crime and the number of prisoners is on its way down, state Senator John Proos (R-St. Joseph) says the state can do better. He says the key is making sure inmates succeed once they are released.

The Michigan Supreme Court says it will settle whether juries - instead of judges - have the sole power to decide whether someone under 18 gets life in prison without parole.

If the Court decides to give the sentencing power to juries, the juries would have to make a specific determination that the convicted had no hope of being rehabilitated and deserved a no-parole sentence.

Prosecutors for Macomb, Saginaw, Genesee, and Oakland counties in Michigan are not complying with two U.S. Supreme Court decisions about juvenile lifers, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in state court.

The complaint says the four prosecutors are seeking life without parole in the re-sentencing of almost every one of the more than 100  juvenile lifer cases in their counties. And the complaint says this is in direct disregard of the U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

In the 1990s, Michigan took a tough stand against teens under 18 convicted of violent crimes. Prosecutors in Michigan started locking more of them up for life in prison without the possibility of parole.

In 2012, the United States Supreme Court ruled that mandatory life without parole sentences are unconstitutional for juveniles. The justices found that it violated the Eighth Amendments' prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment."

With one landmark ruling in 2012, the United States Supreme Court made it clear: mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole for teenagers under 18 are unconstitutional. They said the sentence is considered "cruel and unusual punishment" under the 8th Amendment.

The justices cited research on brain development to determine their ruling.

From the majority opinion in Miller v. Alabama: