21 years ago my family lost my paternal Grandfather to a brutal, premeditated murder. Nathan Nover, was a volunteer for the Shiawassee Sheriff's Department. He was transporting a juvenile delinquent on probation named John Espie from a psychiatric evaluation back to his detention center. At some point during the commute Espie used his handcuffs to strangle my Grandpa to death. After dumping his body in a ditch near the Michigan-Indiana border, he continued on his joyride in Grandpa’s cadillac racking up charges on his credit cards and meeting his girlfriend at a hotel (he had told her to go to in a letter he wrote before committing the murder.) 

Though it cannot bring my Grandpa back, we found what solace we could with the killer’s sentencing to life in prison without parole. 

Now our sliver of solace and sanity is severely threatened due to the Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling of Miller vs. Alabama, which claims that “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.” 

On the fifth day of his trial on charges of first-degree murder and carjacking, John Espie said “I really didn’t care because I didn’t feel I did anything wrong.” 

Our family will have to live with the resentencing the court rules, however all we are asking for is a fair and just hearing prior to the ruling. My family is being DENIED A MILLER HEARING by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office. 

Why is this hearing so important? 

1.) To honor my Grandpa, who’s life was taken for no reason. 
2.) To keep a cold-blooded killer without the neurological wiring for empathy, who’s not deterred by societal consequences and cannot be rehabilitated, locked up as he is a threat to society.

Please help my family by signing this petition to grant us a Miller hearing from MI Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office. Thank you for your time and consideration.