Juvenile Lifers Case

The Michigan Supreme Court Thursday will hear oral arguments on the question of whether persons already sentenced to life in prison as juveniles can be offered a chance at parole. The case People v. Carp will consider whether the U.S. Supreme Court 2012 decision can be applied retroactively. In the Carp case, all three defendants were juveniles when they were convicted either of murder or participating in a murder. They were sentenced to life without parole as juveniles. But in 2012 the U-S Supreme Court ruled that mandated life imprisonment without the chance of parole was unconstitutional. That led to the current question of whether or not the ruling applied to future sentences, or previous ones as well.