My name is Pastor Aylwin K. Parker and over 22 years ago, my friend Taurus Buchanan began serving a life sentence with no chance of parole.

I know that my friend committed a crime and that he has to pay for his actions. However, after over 22 years I feel he has more than paid the price for the crime. He does not deserve to come home from Angola Prison in a body bag.

Not having our friend, brother, son, and neighbor for over 22 years has been an extreme hardship. Thinking that he is set to spend the rest of his life behind bars for throwing 1 punch, in a fight as a 16 year old kid, is absolutely unimaginable.

On a Thursday morning in July of 1993, Taurus was getting ready for an evening flight. Taurus and his father, Elton Mitchell, were heading out for a summer tour. Mitchell played electronic keyboard with Willie Neal Johnson and the New Keynotes. Johnson had agreed to let Taurus tag along, and some of the more experienced musicians were going to help Taurus develop his drumming skills.

It was Taurus’ mother, Everlena Buchanan Lee, who’d bought him a drum set when he was little, and he kept the beat for the choir at Community Bible Baptist Church. (“I wasn’t that good,” he laughs now. “But nobody said it, because it was about God. It wasn’t about whether I was good or not. It was about making a joyful noise unto the Lord.”)

As Taurus packed, his cousins Mario Hutton and Colin Knox were in his living room watching television. Mario was 12, Colin, 15; the three were inseparable. After a while, Mario and Colin wandered out and headed up the street. Soon enough, Taurus followed.

Jacques Brown, 12, hopped on a bicycle with a friend. The two friends crossed the highway, a north-south thoroughfare that to some in Baton Rouge served as a neighborhood boundary. As morning turned to afternoon, they made their way along Kaufman Street. That’s when Colin Knox saw Jacques—and began tying up his shoelaces.

That year, Jacques and Colin had been in the fifth grade at the same elementary school. On the last day of school, Jacques and Colin got into it.

Colin threw the first punch, and didn’t let up. Mario joined in, neighbors looking on. Then Taurus waded in and landed one blow. Jacques crumpled, and never got up.

“I poured water on Jacques’ face, on his forehead, trying to wake him up,” Taurus says. “I was like, ‘Wake up, Jacques,’” but the boy’s eyes rolled back.

Taurus Buchanan, stood charged with second-degree murder—accused of throwing, at the age of 16, a single, deadly punch in a street fight among kids. If convicted, an automatic sentence would fate him to spend the rest of his life in prison, with no hope for parole.

Tony Clayton was 30 years old, and just two years out from passing the Louisiana bar, when he walked into court in February of 1994, prepared to try his first murder case.

A section chief in the East Baton Rouge District Attorney’s Office had told Clayton that securing a murder conviction under these circumstances would be a tough task. But Clayton had told her, “Ah, man, I can convict. I can do it. Just give me the damn case.”

Once he was charged with second-degree murder, Taurus was automatically tried as an adult because he was over the age of 14. If convicted, he would automatically be sentenced to life without parole. And that is exactly what happened.

By age 20, Taurus earned his GED and learned to cook. He later became certified in carpentry, and joined a program to deter juvenile crime, giving talks to middle and high schoolers and to Bible study groups and Boy Scout troops. His stack of certificates, more than 40 deep, includes two for anger management. By the time he was 29, Taurus earned Class A Trusty status, the highest classification at Angola.

On a June evening in 2005, Angola hosted a boxing tournament, with inmates from five prisons squaring off in front of an audience that included nine state lawmakers and three members of the state parole board.

Buchanan, now 28, was there as a server, bringing food and drinks to the special guests. As he went table to table, he recognized one visitor: Tony Clayton.

I walked over there and I said, ‘Excuse me, sir, Mr. Clayton, would you like some water or a soda?’” Clayton looked up—and told Buchanan he looked familiar.

“Yes, sir, I’m Taurus Buchanan.” He then repeated, “Would you like a water or would you like a soda?”

“Man, forget that,” Clayton said. “I have something I want to tell you.”

In 2004, Clayton prosecuted a serial killer, Derrick Todd Lee, whose DNA was linked to the murders of seven Louisiana women. Lee was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole—the same as Buchanan. Clayton learned, he said, “what murder truly is,” and found himself believing that life without parole should be reserved for the Derrick Todd Lees, not the Taurus Buchanans.

That night at the tournament, Clayton told Buchanan that if anybody deserved a second chance, he did. He said that if Buchanan should ever get any kind of hearing, he would speak in his favor.

Clayton says that when he ran into Buchanan that evening, the sight of a mature, respectful, measured young man reinforced the doubts he had been harboring for a long time: “He’s a different man than the kid that I saw.” If he had it to do over, Clayton says, he would present a plea deal for manslaughter. “I would offer him 21 years—and let him do 7,” he says. “I should not have prosecuted Taurus for murder. I think I went too far. If the state of Louisiana lets him out, I would fall on my knees and thank God.”

Buchanan’s life sentence also rests uneasy with at least two of the jurors who voted to convict. Leigh Gilly was a 22-year-old college student when he served on the jury. Now in his 40s, he has four kids—one the same age as Buchanan when he threw that punch. “I’ve thought more and more that he shouldn’t be in prison for life probably because he was so young,” Gilly says. “At 16, we just aren’t who we’re going to be.”

Briley Reed was also 22 when Buchanan stood trial. He was one of the jury’s two African Americans, both of whom voted to convict. “After the decision was made, I still thought about it all the time. It took me a while to get it out of my system, because it was still haunting me,” Reed says. He, too, wishes Buchanan had a chance at parole. “Because he served his time,” Reed says.

Jacques Brown’s aunt, Joann Phillips, has Taurus Buchanan frozen in her mind as a 16-year-old. “How old is he now?” she asks us. Told the answer—Buchanan is 39—she says, “He’s that old now? Oh my God…My heart goes out to him, because even though my nephew is gone forever, forever, forever.” Her voice trails off. Then, moments later, she says: “I forgive him. I forgive him. I just say, let him go.”

After Jacques was killed, his mother, Janice, would sit in the house and stare at the front door for hours, waiting for him to come home.

In October, she said of Buchanan: “I don’t know how they can see that that child should be out of jail when he took somebody else’s life.” But a few days later, on a balmy Saturday afternoon, she went to the cemetery where Jacques is buried. For about an hour, she walked the grounds. When she returned home, something had shifted. She acknowledged that her sister was right. “Holding on to tragedy for a long, long time is not good,” she said. So she changed her mind. She forgave Taurus.

In a 2005 ruling, the Supreme Court banned use of the death penalty for crimes committed by juveniles. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted the link between adolescence and reckless behavior: “From a moral standpoint it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed.”

Five years later, the Supreme Court prohibited sentencing kids to life without parole for cases that didn’t involve a homicide. And in 2012, in Miller v. Alabama, the court extended that ban to mandatory life-without-parole sentences for homicides.

Please support our friend/brother/neighbor/son's petition for commutation (reduction) of his sentence. Jacques Brown's mother has forgiven Taurus. His aunt has forgiven Taurus and recommended release. The prosecutor, Mr. Clayton supports a commutation of his sentence. Two of the jurors support a commutation of his sentence. The US Supreme Court, now, prohibits sentencing kids to life without parole for homicides. We are praying that he will be given the opportunity to prove that he has learned from past mistakes and given a chance to reintegrate into society as a productive, law-abiding citizen.

After this story was published in the January/February 2016 issue of Mother Jones, Taurus Buchanan was informed that he would be granted a clemency hearing. He first applied in Oct. 2014. The hearing will be held on Feb. 16.

Full story: written by Corey G. Johnson and Ken Armstrong

This story was produced in collaboration with Mother Jones.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/01/taurus-buchanan-juvenile-life-sentences