'She Said I Was Irredeemable:' A Second Chance for Youth Sentenced to Life

On May 16, 2023, George Walker did something he feared he would never do again — walk out of jail a free man. For 35 years, the Detroit native was in the Michigan prison system, serving a life term without the possibility of parole for participating in a deadly shootout that occurred when he was 18.

The Michigan Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that giving an 18-year-old an automatic life sentence without parole was a cruel punishment that violated the state constitution. Walker became one of the first eligible individuals in the state to be resentenced and released after the decision.

More than a year after his parole, Walker still feels like a time traveler from the 1980s. His daughter, who was three when he was convicted, is now grown. He has grandchildren, and he married the woman he was seeing when he went away. At 18, he was seen as a kid who should be locked away forever. Now, at 55, he has moved to Missouri to be close to his family and was recently promoted at the steel factory where he works.

“When you give someone who is 18 years old life without parole, you’re saying that they’re not redeemable. You’re saying that they can’t change.” Walker said. “And that’s not true.”

Michigan is among a handful of states in the vanguard of the battle to end life-without-parole sentences for younger offenders. To date, 28 states and Washington, DC have abolished mandatory life without parole for juveniles under 18. As that fight continues, reform advocates are now leveraging neuroscience and state constitutional law to extend bans on no-parole life sentences to “emerging adults,” generally defined as young people, ages 18–25.

Three years ago, Washington became the first state to ban mandatory life sentences for emerging adults under 21, though judges may still impose the sentence at their discretion. Earlier this year, Massachusetts went a step further, ending all life-without-parole for defendants 21 and under — mandatory and discretionary. In the last year, Connecticut and Illinois have enacted new laws barring automatic life without parole for individuals under 21. And in Wyoming, a state trial court is set to hear a challenge to the life-without-parole sentence of a 19-year-old, a case expected to advance to that state’s supreme court.

The Michigan Supreme Court continues to act as well. In June, justices agreed to hear a series of cases that would prohibit mandatory life without parole for defendants who are 19– and 20-years-old and that would apply the court’s decisions retroactively. Given that Democratic justices expanded their majority on the state high court in this month’s election — including adding juvenile justice attorney and professor Kimberly Thomas — it seems likely that the court will be amenable to further rights expansion.

“What’s interesting about this is that these are all holdings and cases based on state constitutional law,” said Becky Feldman, who heads The Sentencing Project’s Second Look Network, which focuses on sentencing reform-related cases. “State supreme courts are using U.S. Supreme Court precedent as a jumping off point, and then interpreting their own state constitutions more broadly.”

Children as Distinct from Adults

Starting with 2005’s Roper v. Simmons, which barred the death penalty for juveniles under 18, the U.S. Supreme Court established that children must be considered constitutionally distinct from adults during the sentencing process. The Court followed with Graham v. Florida in 2010, declaring life without parole unconstitutional for children convicted of non-homicide crimes. Children, the court said, have a diminished culpability and greater prospects for reform and thus “are less deserving of the most severe punishments.” 

Two years later, with Miller v. Alabama, the high court rejected mandatory life-without-parole sentences — sentencing schemes that leave a judge no discretion — for those under 18 convicted of homicide, saying they violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. But, the Court said, life without parole could constitutionally be applied to juveniles who are “permanently incorrigible,” or incapable of reform. In 2016, Montgomery v. Louisiana held that the Miller decision should be applied retroactively.

But the court’s membership changed after Montgomery. and the appetite for further reform appears to have ebbed. In 2021’s Jones v. Mississippi, justices voted 6–3 to leave in place a life-without-parole sentence for a man convicted of murder when he was 15 and said courts need not explicitly find a juvenile was permanently incorrigible to impose a life term. The majority opinion in Jones was written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who had replaced the author of Montgomery, Justice Anthony Kennedy. Another member of the majority in the Montgomery case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, died in 2019 and was replaced by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who sided with the majority in Jones.

Kyle Barry, director of the sentencing-focused legal advocacy group State Law Research Initiative, said he is skeptical justices will extend further rights, in part because of their concerns about interfering in state criminal legal systems. “That concern just simply doesn’t apply to state supreme courts,” he said. “They are really best positioned to articulate rights under criminal law and apply those rights aggressively.”

States Take Action

Some state courts may be open to broader constitutional interpretations because of a subtle difference between the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments,” and many state constitutions that bar “cruel or unusual punishment.” Substituting “or” for “and” gives states more leeway to chart their own courses.

In Michigan, for example, the differences played out in 2022’s People v. Parks, the case which helped free George Walker. Kemo Parks, convicted of aiding and abetting a murder at 18, sought resentencing and release on Eighth Amendment grounds and under the “cruel or unusual punishment” clause of the Michigan Constitution. Justices cited the limits of U.S. Supreme Court precedent when rejecting his Eighth Amendment argument but allowed him to prevail because of the broader language of the Michigan Constitution. “The Michigan Supreme Court has specifically said over and over that our constitution is broader,” said Maya Menlo of the Michigan State Appellate Defender’s Office. “That’s true in a lot of other states, too.”

The population of juveniles serving life without parole plummeted 44 percent in the eight years after the Miller decision, according to The Sentencing Project, and a patchwork of sentencing rules has developed as 33 states and Washington, DC reworked their laws to either ban juvenile life without parole or limit its use. “These new laws provide mandatory minimums ranging from a chance of parole after 15 years (as in Nevada and West Virginia) to 40 years (as in Nebraska),” a Sentencing Project report said.

Efforts to curb juvenile life without parole have also defied the liberal-conservative divide. Legislatures in three red states — Kansas in 2007 and Alaska and Kentucky in 2008 — were the first to ban life without parole sentences for youth under 18 and did so well before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Graham and Miller.

Pauses and Progress in Michigan

The Michigan legislature, however, has yet to get on board. A bipartisan legislative package that would have eliminated life without parole for youth under 18 has stalled. State courts picked up the slack. A recent Michigan Public Radio review found that, since Miller, the courts have reconsidered life sentences for the majority of people convicted as minors.

Nonetheless, 180 prisoners in Michigan are still serving life terms for offenses committed before they turned 18 — the highest number of any state and, by some estimates, any jurisdiction in the world. And Michigan, according to Sentencing Project data, is one of only four states to have imposed life-without-parole sentences on juveniles more than five times in the past five years. The latest was in January.

Overall, more than 5,000 people are serving life sentences in Michigan, many of them for crimes committed as young adults. In fact, during the last three decades, half of those sentenced to life without parole in Michigan were convicted of crimes that occurred prior to their 26th birthday, according to a recent study.

The cases soon to be argued before the state supreme court may put a dent in those numbers. People v. Czarnecki and People v. Bouie seek to extend the Parks ban on mandatory life without parole to 19– and 20-year-olds, respectively.

In a third related case, People v. Poole, prosecutors hope to overturn an appellate decision allowing people who have exhausted their direct appeals to retroactively seek resentencing. Arguing that Michigan is out of step with federal rules, prosecutors say the state should replace its current method of determining retroactivity with a test created by the U.S. Supreme Court. The state high court may also use Poole to review its own 2014 decision denying retroactive resentencing to a man convicted of murder when he was 15.

While the focus in the Poole case is procedural, the court’s decision will have a critical impact on prisoners seeking resentencing. Menlo, who will argue the Poole case and who is also counsel in Czarnecki, said the appellate court corrected a procedural flaw that denied prisoners resentencing simply because of the status of their appeals at the time the Parks decision came down. Of people sentenced to life without parole for crimes committed at 18, those whose appeals were pending at the time of the decision were able to obtain resentencing. Those whose appeals had been resolved were out of luck.

“If you say, ‘This guy was 18 and committed a crime, and another guy who is 18 committed the same crime, should they be punished the same?’ Most people will answer, ‘Yes,’” Menlo said. “The unfortunate reality is that the constitutional rules aren’t applying to everyone equally.”

Impulsiveness, Recklessness, and Risk-Taking

In Michigan and elsewhere, litigation and legislation is informed by a new understanding of brain development in youth. The majority opinion in Miller, for example, cited scientific evidence that children lack maturity and have an underdeveloped sense of responsibility that leads to impulsiveness, recklessness, and risk-taking. A growing body of neuroscientific research shows that emerging adults are susceptible to many of the same impulsive actions and vulnerabilities as children and younger teens, and that human brain development continues until around age 25.

“The science has evolved,” said The Sentencing Project’s Ashley Nellis, co-author of a report released in August on the sentencing of emerging adults. “Emerging adults are still developing in these critical ways that are important to consider at sentencing, because they mitigate the decision to commit a crime.”

As the human brain develops, the likelihood that a person will engage in criminal behavior after their mid-20s also appears to decline. Indeed, recidivism is rare among those resentenced and released from life sentences. A study published in the Journal of Adolescent Research tracked 287 former juvenile lifers for seven years following their release. During that time, only about only 5 percent were charged with new offenses, most nonviolent.

Nellis’s research found that the median age at conviction for people sentenced to life without parole is 23. “It shows we are incarcerating people with the most severe sentence . . . at a time when it’s very likely that they’re soon going to stop committing crimes,” she said.

“I Grew Up”

George Walker’s experience may be a case in point. On Dec. 29, 1987, Walker was on the streets of Ypsilanti, Michigan, selling crack cocaine with two other teenagers. A rival drug dealer appeared, reached for a weapon, and Walker and his friends opened fire. Moments later, a 23-year-old man was dead. While the fatal bullet came from the gun of one of the other teens, a jury convicted Walker of first-degree murder, which carried a mandatory life sentence and no chance of parole.

Walker said he adapted to prison by making trouble, selling drugs, drinking. “I did all the wrong things. All I could see was that this is going to be my life and that I’m going to die in here,” he said. “So I started living that way, not caring about myself or anyone else.”

By his late 20s, however, Walker began reflecting on his life. His grandparents and other close family members had passed away and as those losses mounted, Walker said he recommitted to his Christian faith and signed up for a horticulture landscaping program that “gave me something that I grabbed hold of, that I really enjoyed.”

“When I came into prison at 18 with a life-without-parole sentence, I couldn’t see anything but red. I had to mature to get me out of that thinking,” Walker said. “Once I found out that I could do things, that I could be a productive person in society, that’s when I started to live my life that way. I grew up.”

Geography, Race, and Trauma

Where a young person lives can have an outsized impact on their likelihood of receiving a life without parole sentence. Georgia is one of the few states to see an increase in juvenile life without parole sentences since 2012. The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreported last year that the state had seen a 100 percent increase in juvenile life without parole sentences since the Miller decision. A single county, Richmond, accounted for 20 percent of those sentences.

Nellis’s research also found abundant evidence that Black Americans received harsher sentences than white people across the board, “from the initial decision of whether to incarcerate to the length of sentence imposed.” More than half of young people sentenced to life without parole are Black.

In Georgia, racial disparities have also increased. Before the Miller decision, 60 percent of juvenile lifers were Black, according to an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. As of 2023, the number had risen to 81 percent.

Aside from the neuroscientific issues that may influence their behavior, juveniles and emerging adults often face a range of other social factors that can play a significant role in whether they engage in violent crime. The National Academies of Sciences wrote in 2019 that traumatic events and economic, social, and structural disadvantages “expose less privileged youth to risks, stresses, and demands that ‘get under the skin,’ adversely affecting the body and the brain during critical developmental periods.” A 2011 survey of juvenile lifers found that trauma and violence were common experiences. Nearly 80 percent said they witnessed violence at home and more than 70 percent had been the victim of a violent crime.

“The Judge Was Torn”

Even in states where juvenile life sentences are prohibited and an individual seeking resentencing and release has been a model prisoner, the process often comes down to a single judge — a prospect that can be daunting for individuals seeking release.

Anthony Muhammad was 17 when he was sentenced to life without parole in a Maryland prison for a double homicide committed two years before. His sentencing judge had been unsparing. “She said that I was irredeemable, that I had very little hope of rehabilitation,” he said.

Muhammad set out to prove the judge wrong. He took classes, stayed out of trouble and soon discovered the prison law library. For the next 25 years, he worked in law libraries at institutions across the state and eventually became an advocate for other prisoners serving life terms.

On September 16, 2022, a year after Maryland abolished juvenile life without parole, Muhammad dialed into Zoom for a virtual court hearing to decide his future. The state’s attorney supported his bid for release, and the daughter of one of his victims appeared on his behalf. Even with the support, Muhammad said, the judge was torn. Two people had lost their lives and families had suffered.

But Muhammad’s record and his future plans to mentor youth in Baltimore impressed the judge, who praised his maturity and efforts at rehabilitation, and approved his release. After 29 years in prison, Muhammad was free.

He started working as a mentor at nonprofit youth outreach organization Baltimore Brothers and now also advises the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland on parole issues. Muhammad said his experience makes him a credible messenger to the young people he mentors. “I can engage them. I know where they are, and I can show them the consequences of bad decisions I made,” he said. “I love it. There’s nothing I love doing more.”

Pressing Ahead

Even with success stories like Walker and Muhammad, reform advocates have a lot more work ahead, including efforts to officially end juvenile life without parole sentences in 22 states. They are also grappling with an issue most states are not addressing: sentences for juveniles that exceed the life expectancy of prisoners but are not classified as life without parole, known as “virtual” or “de facto” life terms.

If courts will go further in abolishing life terms for emerging adults is another question. When Massachusetts’s highest court barred life without parole for people up to age 20 earlier this year, Chief Justice Kimberly Budd’s majority opinion expressed skepticism at further extending protections. “The contemporary standards of decency that govern our decision,” Budd wrote, “do not suggest a societal consensus that those aged 21 and above should be treated differently from older adults.”

A dissent in the Massachusetts case may offer a preview of opposing arguments in other state courts. Justice David Lowy said the court was usurping the state legislature’s authority by creating a “new category of individuals entitled to distinct constitutional treatment.”

Still, the State Law Research Initiative’s Barry said he believes states will continue to press ahead — especially as judges discover they are free to act in a “more sensible and logical way” than the U.S. Supreme Court. “We will get to age 25,” he said. “More than that, I think we’re going to see state constitutionalism play a greater role in the broader movement to abolish life without parole entirely.”

In the 1980s and 1990s, a few highly publicized violent crimes, get-tough political rhetoric, and irrational panic over so-called “super predators” — mythical urban youths portrayed as remorseless violent criminals — drove states to increase sentences for the young. Prohibiting life without parole for juveniles and emerging adults is a necessary corrective to discredited public policies, reform advocates say.

For former prisoners like Walker, it’s a matter of basic fairness. “When I was 18, my mind was not fully developed to make adult decisions. I had to grow, mature and change,” Walker said. “But to tell me that I should die in prison because of a crime at 18? That is cruel and unusual.”

David Brown is a freelance writer and former editor in chief of American Lawyer Media, The National Law Journal, and Legal Times.

Suggested Citation: David Brown, 'She Said I Was Irredeemable:' A Second Chance for Youth Sentenced to Life, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ(Nov. 27, 2024), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/she-said-i-was-irredeemable-second-chance-youth-sentenced-life