http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/opinion/sunday/michigan-prosecutors-defy-the-supreme-court.html 2016-09-12 14:03:38 Michigan Prosecutors Defy the Supreme Court The justices have said repeatedly that juveniles should almost never be locked up for life. In Michigan, the message isn’t getting through. === Why are Michigan’s prosecutors ignoring the Supreme Court? Across the state, they are flouting the justices’ clear message in two recent decisions. The first ruling, in 2012, In January, Michigan prisons house 363 of these inmates. All but a very few should be resentenced to shorter terms, with the possibility of parole. Yet prosecutors are seeking to keep more than half of them locked up forever. In Wayne County, which includes Detroit and is responsible for about 150 such inmates, the county prosecutor, Kym Worthy, wants to resentence at least 60 of these people to life without parole. In Oakland County, outside Detroit, the county prosecutor, Jessica Cooper, is seeking life without parole for 44 of the 49 currently serving life without parole. These cases involved “heinous, heinous” crimes, Young people convicted of murder should be justly punished, but Michigan’s approach isn’t close to what the Supreme Court envisioned. The point made in the court’s rulings is that young people are biologically and psychologically different from adults. They are more impulsive and more prone to change as their brains continue to develop. When it comes to driving, voting and buying alcohol, society recognizes these realities; so should the criminal justice system. Some states are changing their laws to reflect this understanding of juvenile development. In the last five years, 12 states — including Texas, Nevada, Wyoming and West Virginia — have banned life-without-parole sentences for juveniles in all cases, for a total of 17, according to In many cases, even the prosecutors believed that more lenient terms were appropriate. In Wayne County, for instance, It’s not just defense lawyers and children’s advocates criticizing this trend in Michigan. Former Gov. William Milliken, a Republican,