Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette is against holding re-sentencing hearings for hundreds of inmates sentenced to life with no chance of parole as juveniles. That’s despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles.Schuette went to the Michigan Supreme Court to request an order that would limit the federal decision only to future cases. His spokesman Randy Wood says juvenile felons sentenced to life for murder or playing a part in a murder should stay in prison and not be resentenced..
“Hauling victims’ families into court to relive these horrific crimes would be a terrible tragedy,” he says.
ACLU attorney Deborah LaBelle says the U.S. Supreme Court was clear that juvenile lifers who were once told they’d die in prison deserve a hearing.
“And to say that we’re going to ignore that in this state, I think is not only legally wrong, but morally appalling,” she says.
LaBelle says, in many cases, the juvenile lifers were not the actual murderers or suffered abuse and that needs to be taken into account.
