A pair of fresh rulings from the Michigan Supreme Court could affect sentencing for people who committed crimes when they were young.
One case is People of MI v. Eads. It involves a man convicted of second-degree murder for a shooting when he was 16. He originally received a 50-to-75-year sentence.
In recent years, however, state and federal courts have been scaling back lengthy sentences for crimes committed while a defendant was a minor.
In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles are unconstitutionally cruel since children's brains aren’t fully developed.
Borrowing from that reasoning in 2022, the Michigan Supreme Court found giving youthful offenders life sentences with the possibility of parole for second-degree murder was also too long. The Eads case sought to extend that logic to his term-of-years sentence.
Writing for the Michigan court’s 6-1 majority, Justice Kimberly Thomas agreed a 50–75-year sentence was functionally life in prison. The court decided resentencing was necessary because of that.
“We find it highly pertinent that the 50-year minimum sentence imposed here creates, at minimum, a good possibility that a youthful offender will not live long enough to even be eligible for parole,” Thomas wrote in the opinion.
Groups support sentencing reform praised Thursday’s decision as a major step toward correcting unfair punishments for others. Michigan has led the nation in sentencing juveniles to life in prison, meaning any case casting a single sentence in doubt could affect others, and have implications for prosecutors' offices too.
Jon Wojtola is with the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office. He’s concerned that the court did not draw a new line for what would be an acceptable sentence for a youthful offender.
“The only thing they say is that specific sentence, that 50-to-75-year sentence, is unconstitutional and anything more than that would be unconstitutional. But what about anything less? They haven’t decided that. They’ve also left open the door for what other crimes are affected by this,” he said in an interview.
Phillip Comorski, the attorney representing the plaintiff in the case, said concerns about the ruling creating more appeals were just based on speculation for now.
“What I think the court is trying to do and what I think they are doing, is recognizing that individuals, such as juveniles should be treated differently because their brains are developing differently,” Comorski said Friday afternoon.
While the Eads case concerned whether a defendant is entitled to a new sentence, the state Supreme Court also ruled on a case concerning how those resentencing hearings play out.
In Thursday’s People of MI v. Black decision, the court unanimously found that if a defendant is seeking to use a psychological evaluation as evidence at a resentencing hearing, then prosecutors can require the defendant to undergo a psychological evaluation with their own expert.
But the prosecution cannot use that new information gained from that evaluation to form its case against a new sentence. The state Supreme Court has previously placed the burden of proof at resentencing hearings for youthful offenders on prosecutors.
The plaintiff had shared concerns that compelling him to the prosecutor’s psych exam in order to make his own case for release would unconstitutionally force him to testify against himself and help build the prosecutor’s case too.
His lawyer, Deborah LaBelle, said she thought Thursday’s ruling was “fair.” She said there’s already plenty of psychological evidence to pull from if prosecutors choose.
“I think that, in many cases, what the prosecutors are unhappy about is those psych evaluations done by the state without any counsel for the youth present almost uniformly show change, reformation, growth, remorse, and strides toward rehabilitation,” LaBelle said Friday.
LaBelle said she hopes the decision helps “move things forward” for her client and the dozens of youthful offenders hoping for a rehearing.
