I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
The ACLU of Michigan was in federal court this week to argue that the Michigan law that allows children to be sentenced to life in prison without parole violates the U.S. Constitution.
Last year in the case of Graham v. Florida the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that life without parole sentences constitute cruel and unusual punishment when applied to minors who did not commit murder.
Under Michigan law, however, children as young as 14 that are charged with certain crimes can be tried as adults and if found guilty, they are sentenced to life without parole.
There are 350 such prisoners in the Michigan system, and according to the ACLU 100 of them did not commit a homicide.
Hill v. Snyder, argued yesterday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District, focuses on nine individuals.
One of the plaintiffs, Jennifer Pruitt, was sentenced to life in prison after participating in a robbery in which the victim was killed by someone else, the civil rights group said. Another plaintiff, Kevin Boyd, was given a life sentence when his mother killed his father because he had given his mother the keys to his fathers house.
“Sentencing children to die in prison completely disregards their capacity for rehabilitation,” Steven Watt, staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program said in a statement. “In America, we should be giving children an opportunity to turn their lives around – not locking them up and throwing away the key.”
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