SECOND CHANCE?
High court rulings give juvenile lifers parole possibility
Joseph Passeno was 17 years old when he and his friend murdered a Rochester Hills couple.
On Nov. 19, 1989, Passeno and Bruce Michaels, then 16 years old, kidnapped, robbed, and fatally shot Wanda Tarr before shooting her husband, General Motors marketing executive Glenn Tarr. The bodies were found in Pontiac’s Hawthorne Park by a woman out walking her dog where the couple had been killed.
The two juveniles were later charged with first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole beginning April 20, 1990.
Fast forward to 2022 and both Passeno, 49, and Michaels, 48, have been re-sentenced to 40 to 60 years having already served 32 years. Passeno’s earliest release date is June 1, 2024, while Michaels’ earliest release date is Dec. 18, 2027.
The action follows a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Alabama that sentencing juveniles under age 18 to mandatory life without parole violated the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment while citing differences in the teenage brain and ability for rehabilitation. In their ruling, justices established and upheld the fact that “children are constitutionally different from adults in their levels of culpability” when it comes to sentencing.
A 2016 Supreme Court ruling in Montgomery v. Louisiana stated that the 2012 ruling must be applied retroactively.
The data
According to The Sentencing Project, 1,465 Americans were serving juvenile life sentences without parole at the start of 2020. This number reflects a 38% decrease from the 2016 count and a 44% decrease from the 2012 count.
As of 2020, a total of 191 individuals remained in Michigan prisons serving juvenile life sentences without parole, according to the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
In 2012, the organization released findings from a survey of people sentenced to life in prison as juveniles and found that:
• 79% witnessed violence in their homes regularly
• 32% grew up in public housing
• Fewer than half were attending school at the time of their offense
• 47% were physically abused
• 80% of girls reported histories of physical abuse and 77% of girls reported histories of sexual abuse
• 62% of offenders, among those for whom racial data are available, are African American.
According to the Vera Institute of Justice, aside from important public safety considerations, the financial cost of juvenile life sentences is significant. Housing juveniles for life requires decades of public expen
ditures.
Nationally, it costs over $33,000 per year to house an average prisoner. In Michigan, it costs over $35,000 per year.
Next steps
As ordered a decade ago, county prosecutors and judges across Michigan and throughout the U.S. were required to review each juvenile lifer case and file resentencing recommendations with judges — either a continuation of the original life sentence without parole or sentence for a term of years with the possibility of parole.
Shortly after the 2012 Supreme Court ruling, the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) provided a list of juveniles sentenced to life without parole to each county prosecutor to review.
The 2012 ruling still allowed for life sentences without parole, but only after further consideration of the individual’s circumstances by a judge.
In deciding whether to keep the convicted killers in prison for their original life sentence or reduce their sentences, judges consider the offenders’ age, mental and emotional development, and home environment at the time of the offense — bound by the law that reserves no chance of parole for those deemed not able to be rehabilitated.
Michigan law requires a recommendation for a term of years’ sentence to go to a judge while a continued life sentence is much more time-consuming and can involve a hearing, witness testimony and other evidence.
As of 2021, Michigan is one of 16 states that continues to allow for juvenile life sentences without parole, according to the Sentencing Project. There are 371 active so-called juvenile lifer cases in Michigan, according to a list obtained by The Oakland Press from the state corrections department. Approximately 84 of those 371 active cases still need to be re-sentenced and are awaiting court action.
In Oakland County, the majority of the 49 juvenile lifer cases have been reviewed and resentenced while a small number are still pending resentencing before judges.
When Jessica Cooper was the county prosecutor, she filed petitions to continue life sentences for 44 of the county’s 49 cases. Of those, 19 had been resentenced when Karen McDonald became the prosecutor in January 2021.
McDonald subsequently reversed life without parole petitions for 26 of those cases. Those prisoners being resentenced face a minimum of 25 years and a maximum of at least 60 years behind bars.
A total of 10 county juvenile cases are still pending before judges, according to county and state officials, awaiting re-sentencing. The other 39 have been completed.