juvenile lifers

In early October, Warren-Gibbs traveled to Lansing to support legislation that would outlaw life-without-parole sentences for people younger than 19 in Michigan. It appears unlikely the bills will get a vote before lawmakers adjourn for the year. But Warren-Gibbs said it’s the job of adults to protect children.

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Michigan sentenced over 360 minors to life without parole — more than any state except Pennsylvania. Half of them have now been released and 90% have been resentenced, in most cases to a finite length of time.

The state House Criminal Justice Committee opened hearings Tuesday on legislation that could allow parole for people sentenced to life in prison when they were teenagers.

Bills scheduled for a Michigan House committee hearing Tuesday would ban life prison sentences for anyone aged 18 and under.

The bills would also set new minimum and maximum sentences (10 and 60 years) for people under 19. And they would allow for a parole review after ten years served, “where the incapacity of youth must be considered.”

The appeal was rooted in a court ruling that mandatory life without parole for 18-year-olds is unconstitutional because a teenager’s brain is not fully developed. The court rejected the argument that the same should be held true for 21-year-olds and held Michigan’s sentencing law is not “cruel or unusual.”

A new bill package in the state Legislature would prevent anyone under the age of 19 from receiving an automatic life sentence.

Decisions Thursday from the Michigan Supreme Court put new boundaries around life sentences for people convicted of murders committed when they were 18 or younger.

For years, states around the country had laws that made a sentence of life without the possibility of parole mandatory for children who committed serious…