END JUVENILE LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE ADVOCACY DAY
DATE: August 19, 2023
TIME: Noon to 3:00 pm ET
WHERE: Nazarene Missionary Baptist Church, 901 Melbourne Street, Detroit, MI 48211
Hosted by Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth
Supporting Organizations:
- ACLU of Michigan
- Safe & Just Michigan
- State Appellate Defenders Office
- Michigan Poor People's Campaign
The purpose of the event is to provide training on grassroots legislative advocacy to support passage of House Bills 4160-4164 and Senate Bills 119-123 which, if passed, would end life without parole (LWOP) sentences for justice-involved Michigan minors.
A variety of experts will present at the event including attorneys, formerly incarcerated people sentenced to LWOP when they were minors ("juvenile lifers"), victims of youth violence who support ending LWOP sentences for children, Michigan legislators, and others.
Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
Request a ticket to attend the event from https://bit.ly/TicketsDetroitJLWOP The link is case-sensitive.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
WHY THIS EVENT IS IMPORTANT
In 2012 the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in the case of Miller v. Alabama which banned mandatory life without parole (LWOP) sentences for justice-involved children. Eleven years later Michigan shamefully leads the nation as the state with the largest number of impacted people still serving the extreme sentence.
Twenty-eight states have abolished LWOP sentences for minors. Nine other states do not impose the sentence or have no one currently serving the sentence. This leaves only 13 states that still impose the sentence on minors.
When the U.S. Supreme Court banned LWOP sentences for minors in 2012 it granted sentencing bodies discretion to impose term-of-year or LWOP sentences. It made it abundantly clear, however, that LWOP sentences could only be imposed on minors who are permanently incorrigible or irreparably corrupt; meaning that they must be wholly incapable of change and rehabilitation for the remainder of their lives.
Despite this requirement Michigan prosecutors have weaponized the legal system and abused their power by pursuing LWOP sentences against large swaths of minors who are not eligible to receive the sentence. Only a very small number of circuit court judges in the state have supported prosecutors by arbitrarily imposing the sentence on people with documented and anecdotal evidence of their capacity for change and rehabilitation.
Their actions are a waste of judicial resources and taxpayer dollars. They also deprive impacted people of years of freedom having to appeal unconstitutional rulings to the appellate courts.
Since 2012 eight Michigan juvenile lifers have died in prison while awaiting the opportunity to be released. Two of them died after being resentenced to a term of years. For these people LWOP was a death sentence, a punishment not allowed by the Michigan Constitution.
Over 70% of the people who originally received a mandatory LWOP sentence in Michigan were children of color. Since 2012 when the U.S. Supreme Court banned the mandatory sentence 90% of the minors who have receive the sentence in Michigan have been children of color.
The racially disparate practice violates the equal protection clauses of the U.S. and Michigan Constitutions, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. It may also constitute a crime against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Under proposed House Bills 4160-4164 and Senate Bills 119-123 children will still be held fully accountable for their actions and can receive a substantial term of years in prison that incarcerate them as long as 60 years. However, they will not be condemned to die in prison for a tragic mistake they made when they were still mentally and emotionally underdeveloped. Instead, the bills would provide them a meaningful, realistic, and achievable opportunity for release consideration later in their adult life based upon demonstrated change and rehabilitation.
To date a remarkable only one percent of juvenile lifers released from prison after being resentenced to a term of years have recidivated. The national overall average recidivism rate for all offense categories is 68%. This makes juvenile lifers among the safest demographic of people to be released from prison.
Your attendance at the Advocacy Day event is very important. We need as many people as possible to learn how they can become part of the growing chorus of voices calling on Michigan lawmakers to join the 74% of other states across the nation that have rejected the cruel and throwaway practice of sentencing children to die in prison.
Current juvenile lifers and future justice-involved minors are depending on our collective action to ensure they receive constitutional sentences and the opportunity to prove they are redeemable.
Efrén Paredes Jr. (he/him/el)
Founder
Support Michigan Prison Reform
http://fb.com/groups/MichPR
e: MiPrisonReform@gmail.com
Michigan Poor People's Campaign, Co-Chair
Presente.org, Co-Founder
Michigan Collaborative to End Mass
Incarceration (MI-CEMI), Member
(The following petition calls on Michigan lawmakers to support an end to LWOP sentences for minors: http://bit.ly/END-MI-JLWOP The link is case-sensitive.)