(MintPress) – A Michigan judge declared Wednesday that more than 350 inmates serving no-parole sentences are now eligible for release, a landmark decision that could impact thousands of other inmates in other states. The inmates, all serving life sentences for crimes committed when they were juveniles, could be released retroactively following a landmark 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision.
U.S. District Judge John Corbett O’Meara commented on the decision, saying that compliance with the court decision “requires providing a fair and meaningful possibility of parole to each and every Michigan prisoner who was sentenced to life for a crime committed as a juvenile.”
Wednesday’s decision follows a Supreme Court decision last year that created the precedent needed to overturn the Michigan law.
The Court’s decision found that life sentences for two 14-year-olds convicted of murder constituted a “cruel and unusual punishment.” This reforms the 2005 SCOTUS ruling in Roper V. Simmons, a decision that found use of the death penalty for juvenile offenders unconstitutional.
Working with the American Civil Liberties Union, Deborah LaBelle, a lawyer, challenged the Michigan law prohibiting felons serving life sentences for crimes committed as juveniles from seeking parole. The Supreme Court decision gave the challenge enough power to overturn the state law.
While this is an important step, other legal experts warn that paroling juvenile in other states could be a protracted, uphill battle going forward. “The battle still is being waged in various states. It’s not a slam dunk,” said Lawrence Wojcik, a Chicago lawyer who co-chairs the juvenile justice committee of the American Bar Association.
Regardless of the final outcome, the ruling presents a more humane policy that could help decrease America’s massively inflated prison population, the highest of any country in the world.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics, there are approximately 2,266,800 adults behind bars in the U.S., by far the highest of any country on earth. The number of adults under correctional supervision, including those on parole, increases this number considerably to more than 7 million nationwide.
Part of the problem continues to be a national problem collecting and analyzing DNA evidence, especially for crimes committed decades ago when crime lab analysis was less developed than today.
In July 2012, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Justice Department began reviewing thousands of criminal cases to determine whether inmates deserve to be freed, exonerated or given a new trial.
Although no exonerations have been granted as a result of the ongoing investigation, other independent reviews have helped free those wrongfully imprisoned.
The Innocence Project, an investigation conducted in conjunction with the Benjamin Cardozo school of Law at Yeshiva University has helped free 303 people through DNA review, including 17 who served time on death row.