This post is about the stalling of Michigan SB 173, styled as “A bill to amend 1927 PA 175, entitled ‘The code of criminal procedure,’” also known as the bill to end mandatory sentencing of juveniles to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (”JLWOP”). SB 173, which has the support of the House of Representatives, was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 3, 2009. There it languishes, and needs to be revived in order to bring Michigan in line with the mainstream of the country with respect to this horrific sentencing practice. JLWOP is employed by no other democratic nation, and Michigan is in the top three states in the U.S. that have inmates sentenced to die in prison for crimes committed while they were juveniles. Several of them maintain their innocence.
What seems to have given this bill some pause was 16-year old Jonathan Belton being charged with open murder in the shooting death of 28-year-old Oak Park Police Officer Mason Samborski, which shooting occurred on December 27, 2008. Citizens responding to the news made comments such as: “fry the little puke,” and “kill him—at least he doesn’t leave a wife and child behind like Ofc. Samborski,” and “I hope he gets the death penalty.” Clearly these comments are born of rage, justified anger, and rietous indignation. Unfortunately, they are also born of ignorance, vengeance, pain, and fear.
One main purpose of the criminal justice system is so that the types of punishment that would be inflicted by an angry mob are replaced by ideas like due process, trial by jury, a defense, and a neutral judge. The system, however, is bound to apply the laws handed down by the representatives of the people of the state. What the state currently says is that juveniles convicted of certain crimes shall be imprisoned without the possibility of parole. MCL 750.316. Until the peoples’ representatives act to undo this policy, justice continues to unravel in Michigan.
Here is one example of a failure of the mandatory JLWOP sentencing policy. On December 14, 1993, a murder occurred in Detroit. Michael Scott, MDOC no. 240464 was sentenced to life in prison on November 30, 1994 after pleading guilty as the principle to the murder. Another man, Cortez Davis, MDOC no. 237818, was present for the murder and robbery, but maintained through trial and to this day that he was not the shooter. Davis was convicted by a jury after improper jury instructions were given at his trial concerning the interplay between accomplice liability and felony murder, a legal fiction, and a failure of his defense to hit on the fact that principle liability had been previously established. He was convicted of felony murder, having not actually committed any murder. Liability for the murder was admitted by the principle to the crime, Michael Scott. Nonetheless, the judge having commented in an order that she had serious doubts about Mr. Davis’s liability, the nature of the jury instructions, and the possibility of rehabilitating Mr. Davis, sentenced him to JLWOP. Thus the law failed—a sixteen year old with at worst secondary liability, and at best no liability, was sentenced to die in prison.
Such failures disgrace our system and embarrass our state, and perhaps more importantly, our credibility on the world stage. The United States continually censures foreign countries for various abuses, which it paternalistically styles “human rights violations.” See U.S. Department of State defending U.S. policy as “consistent.” But, it seems to me at least a little absurd to contend simultaneously that children should be free from oppression, sex abuse, and unjust imprisonment, when we subject children to those very things here at home. The only difference between the two being that oppression, sex abuse and unjust imprisonment are justified here by convicting the children of certain enumerated crimes. If you disagree, and don’t find it absurd, then you can at least appreciate the inconsistency.
The raw numbers reflect the values of the angry mob, and not of the interests of justice. In its report of May 2008, entitled The Rest of Their Lives: Life without Parole for Youth Offenders in the United States in 2008, Human Rights Watch studied the JLWOP phenomenon and made several disturbing findings. Today, Michigan is third to Pennsylvania and Louisiana in terms of the number of juveniles sentenced to life in prison without parole, with 316 incarcerated as of May, 2008. The majority of youth sentenced to life without parole are first offenders. An estimated 26 percent of these offenders were convicted of felony murder. Many youth get into fights with other prisoners in order to defend themselves from physical violence, including rape. Once in prison, youth offenders sentenced to life without parole believe that society has thrown them away, and their loss of hope can result in self-harm and suicide.
Perhaps the most important conclusion of the report is that lawmakers do not face a choice between being “soft on crime” and supporting life without parole for teen offenders. They can protect community safety, save on incarceration costs, and still save youth from a lifetime in prison. Giving youth offenders a second chance would align U.S. sentencing practices with the rest of the world and with the goals of criminal punishment, which are rehabilitation, retribution, deterrence, and incapacitation.
Retribution against youth offenders is unjust. Based on medical evidence, while teens can commit the same acts as adults, by virtue of their immaturity they are not as blameworthy or culpable. They do not have adults’ developed abilities to think, to weigh consequences, to make sound decisions, to control their impulses, and to resist group pressures; their brains are anatomically different, still evolving into the brains of adults. Exacting retribution upon a youth offender is akin to vengeance of the strong against someone weak and partially incapacitated.
The deterrent effect of JLWOP is almost completely absent. As the report points out, young people are less likely than adults to pause before acting, and when they do, research has failed to show that the threat of adult punishment deters them from crime. Deterrence is also unlikely given research showing that adolescents cannot really grasp the true significance of the sentence.
There is no doubt the current laws incapacitate youth offenders insofar as locking them up forever makes it less likely that they will ever commit a crime again. But at what cost? And once an offender has been rehabilitated the need to incapacitate them dissolves. Mr. Davis, anecdotally, assures this author that he is rehabilitated, and that if he were to be released that he would engage in community education about crime—particularly of youth—and also that he would never again entertain the possibility of breaking a law.
Rehabilitation should be the stick of choice for lawmakers on the fence. In the language of the report, youth are not all irredeemably violent people. JLWOP sentences send an unequivocal message to youth offenders that they are banished from the community forever, no matter how they change or grow. Some may say that they can change and grow in prison all they want. This writer’s question to those folks, is whether that comment is born of justice, or born of anger, ignorance, vengeance, pain, or fear.
Consider this a plea with the Michigan Senate Judiciary Committee to put SB 173 to a vote, and endorsing the letter sent from HRW to the Michigan Sente Judciary Committee on December 8, 2008.
