Dontez Tillman and Thomas McCloud were 14-year-old middle schoolers in Pontiac in the summer of 2008. Neither was old enough to drive, drink, nor apply for a video store membership.
Today, Tillman and McCloud are serving mandatory life in a Lapeer prison, convicted as adults of first-degree murder in November for the beating deaths of two homeless men over three days with older teens. “I screwed up my life,” McCloud told the Free Press in a prison interview. “I wish I could take it all back, that I never left the house that day.”
Their case brings into focus Michigan's position in a national debate over how to handle young killers. The state has 352 prisoners serving mandatory life sentences for crimes committed while they were juveniles — the second-highest number in the world, behind Pennsylvania at 444.
Legislators and the U.S. Supreme Court are rethinking the idea of sending teens away to prison forever. Michigan is among 12 states where legislation has been introduced that would ban the practice, or at least give judges some discretion. Texas and Colorado in recent years have banned mandatory life for juveniles.
But Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper, whose office tried Tillman and McCloud, said the boys are exactly where they belong. “ These are gut-wrenching, soul-searching determinations,” she said. As the debate continues, Tillman, now 15, and McCloud, now 16, spend their days in a juvenile unit at the Thumb Correctional Facility, an adult prison in Lapeer. At age 21, they will be transferred to the state's adult prison population to spend the rest of their lives.
It is important to note that the two cases from Florida currently before the Supreme Court, Graham and Sullivan, involve juveniles sentenced to LWOP without having cause a death. Consequently, unless the Supreme Court issues a very constitutional broad ruling in those cases, it is unlikely that middle schoolers like Tillman and McCloud will have their fates directly by these SCOTUS ruling.
It is also interesting to note that the two states noted in this article as having the largest number of mandatory life sentences for juvenile offenders are Michigan (which has never had the death penalty) and Pennsylvania (which functionally does not have an operating death penalty). Meanwhile, the national leader in use of the death penalty, Texas, has eliminated mandatory life for juveniles. These realities reinforce my sense that there can often be an inverse relationship between use of the death penalty for the worst murderers and use of other extreme punishments for less culpable offenders.

Michigan is one of the leading states in imposing life sentences on juveniles. Is this appropriate? Is it right? Is this a legitimate?

Ps. Thank you ahed, for helping me out. I really appreciated.

I don't exactly know what you are recommending here, abolishment of the juvenile life sentence, reverting to time, and parole, or the death penalty.

These two young men beat two defenseless men over a period of days, not even premeditated but brutal murdering. They should be away for a lifetime and then some, or better yet, hung from the rafters, or lethal injection, maybe a little suffering thrown in. IMO.

Tick

Michigan is one of the leading states in imposing life sentences on juveniles. Is this appropriate? Is it right? Is this a legitimate?Hello T:

It's NOT appropriate. It's NOT right. But, until it gets reversed, it's legitimate.

When I was a kid, people recognized that juveniles didn't have fully formed brains. They COULDN'T appreciate the consequences of their actions, so they were treated differently than adults.

Then along came some right winged politicians who wanted to make their marks in society on the backs of children. They decided, in the name of law and order, to charge SOME children as adults, because they committed "adult" crimes... Sounds logical, right? Until you realize that there's no such thing as "child" crime. ALL crime is "adult". It's the PERPETRATOR who's different.

Sad to say, not any more.

excon

Hey Ex,
I am sorry, but I need to both agree and disagree with you here. I agree that juveniles have less intellegence and appreciation for consequences. That is why we treat juveniles differently from adults. In all states as a result of Gault and other juvenile cases, youth crimes are generally treated under a delinquency or child in need of services plan. Only the extreme crimes are held for youthful offender status or charged as adults (whatever terminology is used in your particular jurisdiction).

I agree that the imposition of the death penalty for juvenile crimes is probably not appropriate, but LWOP certainly is. There is a huge difference between shop=lifting and beating someone to death. If their brains were not functional enough to appreciate the fact that murder is wrong and there are consequences then they should have been found incompetent to stand trial.

Murder is very different than manslaughter (as you well know) and if there were an involuntary or even voluntary manslaughter, I agree LWOP is not appropriate. The main problem I see with blanket abolision of LWOP as an option is that gangs would use juveniles to commit the most brutal crimes (similar to the thinking in the early 80's).

Trunks,
Can I ask why you posted this? And why you posted in this forum?

You know I had a 15 year old "child" who was about 6 foot tall and about 180 lbs try and beat my head in with a base ball bat, He knew it was wrong. He knew what he was doing.

You know somehow him getting out in a year or two had he actually hurt me seriously would not have seemed very fair to me. And if had killed me with it, I feel the same punishment would have been just as fair. For him as a adult,

Old enough to play... then old enough to play.

Personally... I think they should be eligible for and get the death penalty. If I wrote the law they would be.

Murder is murder... its not a "Youthful Indiscretion". Commit an adult crime, get an adult sentence.