Michigan Court of Appeals Affirms LWOP Sentence for Defendant Who Committed Offenses at Age 15
Recent Cases in Law and Neuroscience, Curated by the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior and the Shen Neurolaw Lab with support from the Dana Foundation
The Court of Appeals of Michigan affirmed a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (LWOP) on December 17, 2020 for Willie Terrell Clemons, who was 15 years old at the time of his offenses.
In 1996, Clemons was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to mandatory LWOP. Following the 2012 decision in Miller v. Alabama prohibiting mandatory LWOP for juveniles under age 18, a resentencing was ordered. Again, Clemons was sentenced to LWOP, but this time the sentence was discretionary.
Clemons argued on appeal that the trial court abused its discretion by resentencing him to LWOP and that it “erred by concluding that defendant’s age and family and home environment were not mitigating factors.”
During trial, several mitigating factors were mentioned. The opinion noted that “there was evidence that defendant did not understand that a shot from a .22 caliber pistol could kill an individual, which demonstrated defendant’s failure to appreciate consequences” and a doctor testified that Clemons experienced significant childhood trauma which “could have impacted his brain development.”
In its opinion, the appeals court cited the “many misconduct offenses” that Clemons committed while incarcerated, which “occurred after defendant was aware that he had an opportunity to be resentenced pursuant to Miller.” Because of this, the court stated, Clemons “did not demonstrate that his behaviors and responses… at the time of the offense were related to the attributes of his youth.”
Though the appeals court found that the trial court did err by failing to consider Clemons’ difficult home environment as a mitigating factor, it did not find that any other Miller factors were mitigating factors for Clemons, and thus ruled that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by sentencing Clemons to LWOP.
Clemons further argued that his defense counsel was ineffective for failing to present testimony regarding adolescent brain development. The court noted that several articles were presented at trial “regarding the impact of early trauma on adolescent brain development and the implications for adolescent brain development science on the sentence of life imprisonment without parole for juvenile offenders” in addition to an expert witness, who testified that Clemons’ “brain was not fully developed at the time of the offense, particularly because of his childhood trauma, and sufficiently presented evidence to the trial court that defendant was less culpable and less deserving of a sentence of life imprisonment without parole because of his characteristics of youth.” Because this evidence was presented at trial, the appeals court ruled that defense counsel was not ineffective.
Accordingly, the court affirmed Clemons’ discretionary LWOP sentence.
Key words: LWOP, Miller v. Alabama, adolescent brain, childhood trauma, Michigan
Citation: People v. Clemons, 2020 WL 7414654
This post is the 39th post as part of an ongoing Center for Law, Brain & Behavior (CLBB) series tracking the latest developments in law and neuroscience cases. To see previous posts about recent cases, see the full case archive on the CLBB website. To see updates on legal scholarship, see the Neurolaw News, hosted by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. This project is made possible through support of the Dana Foundation.
