- Prosecutors have until early January to decide if they’re going to seek a life sentence again for hundreds of people serving mandatory life sentences for first degree murder.
- Wayne County has the most cases by far. Prosecutor Kym Worthy says her office has made decisions in about 100, but won’t be able to review the rest by the deadlines.
- In Ingham County, the prosecutor has not only met the deadlines, but is also almost done resentencing all 18 cases to less than life.
- As of late December, a Michigan Public analysis found over 100 individuals have already been resentenced to less than life.
A series of state Supreme Court rulings made hundreds of people sentenced to life when they were young adults eligible for resentencing. As of late December, over 100 of these “lifers” have already been resentenced to less than life.
That leaves about 730 people still waiting for their day in court, according to Michigan Public’s analysis of publicly available state prison records.
Of the individuals who have been resentenced to less than life, at least 80 have already been released from prison. Most are still on parole or probation.
The Michigan Supreme Court’s rulings found that mandatory life sentences for crimes committed at ages 18, 19 and 20 were unconstitutional, citing scientific evidence that suggests young people’s brains are not fully developed yet.
“You don't force someone to make decisions like this on a time schedule when you need time to fairly evaluate these cases.”Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy
In a set of April decisions, the court set deadlines for the first major step in the resentencing process - county prosecutors deciding whether to ask judges to resentence people to life or to ask for a term of years.
The deadlines are December 29, 2025 for the 18-year-old cohort and January 5, 2026 for the 19- and 20-year-old group.
But county prosecutors took issue with the deadlines, saying there was not enough time to locate and contact victims’ families, review the cases, and look over the defendants’ activities while in prison.
“That's not fair to the victims and their families… it's not fair to the defendant, and it's not fair to the judicial process,” said Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy. “You don't force someone to make decisions like this on a time schedule when you need time to fairly evaluate these cases.”
The court didn’t say young adults can’t get life without parole. Instead, justices ruled that young adults should have prison terms decided on a case-by-case basis — with age as a primary consideration.
“If a prosecutor chooses not to seek a life without parole sentence, the person still needs to be resentenced and, in a vast majority of cases, see the parole board,” said Jessica Zimbelman, deputy director at the State Appellate Defender Office.
It’s not as if “the prison doors swing wide open” after these deadlines, she said. “There's still a process for people to come home.”
Zimbelman said that life sentences in these cases should be “rare”. Several prosecutors told Michigan Public most resentencing hearings will likely result in a term of years, even when the prosecutors prefer life.
The lifers who are now getting a second chance at freedom were all convicted of first degree murder. Some were directly responsible for planning and executing a killing. Others were charged for aiding and abetting.
“A herculean task” in Wayne County
Even after resentencing a few dozen people, there are still more than 360 unresolved cases in Wayne County. No other county comes close to that caseload. Oakland County has the next largest amount, with 77 remaining cases.
Worthy said her office has made decisions on at least 104 cases ahead of the deadlines. Worthy said she did not ask for life sentences in most of those cases.
“There's a number of people where we're recommending a term of years that we think should continue to do life in prison, but the factors that we have to look at … dictate our decision making,” she said.
The state Supreme Court rulings came with five factors that judges must consider before sentencing someone to life without parole for crimes they committed at 18, 19 or 20. Worthy and other prosecutors told Michigan Public those factors "overwhelmingly” favor defendants.
For the few hundred cases her office won’t have time to review by the deadline, Worthy said her office will ask for life sentences, to preserve the option until the office can actually review the case. She expects to change that position in many cases.
“It's not that Wayne County is just saying we're going to throw everything at the wall,” she said. “We haven't done that. We have tried to make these decisions thoughtfully.”
Worthy said significant efforts have been made to review all the cases before the deadline, including hiring additional staff dedicated to this process.
“We still don’t have the documentation in a lot of these cases, let alone a lawyer for the defendant,” she said.
“This is a herculean task,” Worthy added. “I personally read all the memos. I personally read everything. I do not reach out myself to the families. I don't have that luxury. But I have people that are specifically assigned to do so.”
“A time crunch” in other counties
Oakland County is the runner-up for most resentencing cases, followed by Genessee, Kent and Saginaw. Prosecutors in Oakland, Genesee and Saginaw counties did not respond to requests for information about their progress toward the deadlines in time for publication.
Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker said his office is having a much easier time than Wayne County because they only have about 30 cases.
“It hasn't been easy to do it for us, even though we're going to make the deadline,” Becker said. “I got a case from 1969 that files have been gone and we had a intern dig up microfiche on that case to try and piece together what it was all about.”
The “hardest” part, he said, was trying to track down victims’ families.
“And sometimes you have those conversations like ‘hey, we can't meet this burden, there's going to be a resentencing,’” he said.
Becker said he hasn’t finished making decisions about asking for life in all of Kent County’s cases. He said he expects more recent cases are “going to see the battles” because case documentation is more readily available and defendants won’t benefit from long prison stays filled with examples of “rehabilitative” behavior.
Resentencing is not a guarantee of freedom. The minimum sentence is still 25 years. Based on that, Michigan Public found about 21% of the individuals affected by the state Supreme Court rulings will not be eligible for release until at least 2035. At least 60% are already 50 or older.
Overall, Becker expects the resentencing process will take years.
Ingham County is the exception
But in Ingham County, the prosecutor said all but two of its 18 cases are done.
The lighter case load helped, but the county also got an early start. Efforts to resentence some of the cases began years ago, before the state Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of mandatory life sentences for people who committed crimes at 19 and 20 years old.
It had ruled those sentences were cruel and unusual for people who committed crimes at 18, but that 2022 decision only applied to new sentences.
Still, former Ingham County Prosecutor Carol Siemon began working to resentence all of the county’s 18-year-old cohort before retiring in 2022.
“I have a different perspective on these cases than I think she did,” current Prosecutor John Dewane said.
Because of his predecessor’s actions, Dewane only had 12 cases after the state Supreme Court’s rulings last year. One of the 12 people died in prison.
“I made the decision I was not going to seek life without the possibility of parole under the factors. I didn't think I could meet all five of them,” Dewane said. “Really only one factor falls in the favor of the prosecution, which is protection of the society.”
He said he also knew the sentencing judges in his county well enough to know they likely would not rule in his favor.
“And so I think I did justice, I guess, to the families (of the victims) in not holding off. Just let's get moving on it because we know what's coming,” he said. “Many (victim’s families) were upset, obviously frustrated, emotionally distraught.”
Dewane said there were “very few” who were willing to forgive. But the perpetrator’s activity in prison made a big difference for some victims’ families, he said.
“There were several individuals for resentencing that went to prison thinking they would never see the light of day or never get out, right?” Dewane said. “I did see some that, you look at them and after 30 years, you're like, ‘they have done a lot to rehabilitate themselves,’ even though they took somebody's life.”
Still, Dewane disagrees with the state Supreme Court's rulings.
He said this change should have been left up to the legislature or a ballot measure rather than justices “that probably really never have tried a murder case or dealt with victims who have lost a loved one to a murder.”
