MLive file photoAnthony Jones, 50, became eligible for parole earlier this year after his 1979 life sentence at 17 was challenged because he was a robbery accomplice, but did not kill, a Kalamazoo store owner. His attorney, Deborah LaBelle, right. is planning similar hearings to resentence Michigan's other juvenile lifers after the Supreme Court struck the sentences down.
Petitions to resentence Michigan’s many juvenile lifers are expected soon following Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down the state’s harshest penalty.
In a 5-4 vote, the high court said mandatory life sentences without chance of parole are unconstitutionally cruel for minors.
The ruling will impact Michigan more than almost anywhere else. The state ranks second in the nation in prisoners serving life for crimes committed at 17 and younger, 358. There are about 2,500 nationally.
Sentencing reformers are beginning the process of petitioning to have the inmates resentenced in their home counties, working with lawyers who have volunteered to provide the service for free.
“There are a number of groups that are working to ensure that each individual has skilled counsel and can put on an adequate and thorough hearing for re-sentencing,” said lawyer Deborah Labelle, who represents many of Michigan’s juvenile lifers.
“We’re committed to providing training for lawyers and helping them obtain the appropriate expertise to prepare for the best hearing possible.”
MLive.com Saulo Montalvo Quotes from Juvenile Lifers gallery (22 photos)


Kimberly Thomas, a law professor at the University of Michigan who specializes in juvenile justice issues, said the hearings would cover a range of factors in setting a new sentence.“The judge will be required to consider not only the chronological age, but all the things that go along with that age, impulsivity, the influence of others, all the things the court spoke of,” Thomas said.
Attorney General Bill Schuette pledged to ensure victims’ families are not forgotten in the hearings.
“We will comply with the Court’s ruling, and will work aggressively to ensure reviewing judges never lose sight of the victims and families who were permanently damaged by these vicious murders,” Schuette said in a statement.
A November investigation by MLive Media Group found a combination of get-tough legislation and mandatory sentencing laws pushed Michigan near the top of juvenile lifer cases nationally.
The inmates are almost exclusively male. Two out of three are black. Most were 17 at the time, but 45 percent were 16 and younger. Nearly half did their crimes in the 1990s.
About one in three did not commit the actual killing, but were convicted of aiding and abetting the crime or of being involved in other wrongdoing when it occurred.

Wayne County has sentenced the most, 41 percent. Number-two Oakland County is well back, at 13 percent, followed by Genesee, Kent, and Saginaw counties with about half as many as Oakland.
More than two-thirds of juvenile lifers nationally - 1,727 out of 2,496 - are in five states with mandatory sentences. In addition to Michigan, they are Pennsylvania (475), Florida (355), California (301) and Louisiana (238), according to the ACLU of Michigan and Second Chances 4 Youth.
Monday’s ruling follows a 2005 decision that said minors cannot be sentenced to death, and extends a 2010 decision that said juveniles could not receive life without parole in non-homicide cases. Both were 5-4 votes.
Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan said mandatory sentences do not take into account the potential for cognitive and character development in youth offenders.
“Mandatory life without parole for a juvenile precludes consideration of his chronological age and its hallmark features — among them, immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences. It prevents taking into account the family and home environment that surrounds him — and from which he cannot usually extricate himself — no matter how brutal or dysfunctional,” Kagan wrote.
“It neglects the circumstances of the homicide offense, including the extent of his participation in the conduct and the way familial and peer pressures may have affected him,” the opinion continued.
“Indeed, it ignores that he might have been charged and convicted of a lesser offense if not for incompetencies associated with youth—for example, his inability to deal with police officers or prosecutors(including on a plea agreement) or his incapacity to assist his own attorneys.”
Joining Kagan were justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor.
Dissenting were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Anthony Alito Jr.
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