State Appellate Defender Office asks lawmakers for funding to represent juvenile lifers after recent court rulings

Marlena Davin, deputy director and acting director of the State Appellate Defender Office (SADO), told the Michigan House Appropriations Subcommittee on Corrections and Judiciary that the office seeks $2.3 million to add 14.5 positions to its juvenile lifer unit so it can represent people entitled to resentencing under recent court rulings.

Davin said the request is driven by a wave of appellate decisions that expanded resentencing eligibility beyond those under 18. “We want to be able to represent as many people as possible,” she told committee members, adding that SADO estimates the juvenile lifer unit could represent roughly 300 people if properly funded.

The request comes after decades of litigation beginning with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2012 Miller decision and its 2016 Montgomery ruling, which found mandatory life-without-parole sentences for people 17 and younger unconstitutional without individualized sentencing findings. Davin told the committee Michigan had about 363 people initially entitled to resentencing under those precedents and that SADO represented “about 193” of them during that period. She described how subsequent state high-court decisions (Parks, Poole) extended similar relief to 18-year-olds and that more recent cases (identified in testimony as Sarnacki and Taylor) extend the issue to people who were 19 or 20 at the time of their offenses.

Davin outlined statutory and scheduling constraints…