People v. Langston

People v. Langston considers whether mandatory life without parole (LWOP) for felony murder, absent a showing that the defendant acted with malice or intent to kill, constitutes “cruel or unusual” punishment under the Michigan Constitution. In joining Mr. Langston’s fight as amici, the MacArthur Justice Center, along with the State Law Research Initiative, argue that all mandatory life-without-parole sentences are per se cruel under the Michigan Constitution and that therefore, at a minimum, sentencing a person to life without parole for felony murder, absent evidence of malice, is also unconstitutionally cruel. 

In 1976, Edwin Langston was convicted of aiding and abetting a robbery in which his co-defendant shot and killed a store owner when Mr. Langston was not in the store. Under Michigan’s law at the time, Mr. Langston’s participation in the robbery made him liable for his co-defendant’s killing under the doctrine of “felony murder,” a charge that resulted in a mandatory life-without-parole sentence. Four years later, the Michigan Supreme Court held that malice—which requires either an intent to kill or similar mental state—is an essential element of Michigan’s felony murder statute.  Yet, that decision did not apply retroactively to Mr. Langston, so forty-five years later he remains in prison despite there having been no showing that he acted with malice or intent to kill. 

In 2022, Mr. Langston asked the Michigan Supreme Court to review his case on the ground that his sentence violated the Michigan Constitution’s prohibition against “cruel or unusual” punishment. The Court is considering whether to take up his case alongside several other cases concerning the constitutionality of mandatory life without parole. These include People v. Czarnecki and People v. Taylor, which consider the constitutionality of mandatory life without parole for emerging adults who were nineteen and twenty respectively at the time of their offenses. 

The MacArthur Justice Center (MJC), along with our partners at the State Law Research Initiative (SLRI) and local counsel Allison Kriger of LaRene & Kriger PLC, filed an amicus brief in support of Mr. Langston’s position—as we similarly have in Czarnecki and Taylor—arguing that the Michigan Constitution’s cruel or unusual punishment clause prohibits punishments that foreclose altogether the possibility of an individual’s rehabilitation, as modern LWOP does. This meaning of the clause comports with the drafting and constitutional history of the Michigan Constitution, including Michigan’s early abolition of capital punishment, and the state’s longstanding history of rehabilitative sentencing and clemency practices. In fact, for most of Michigan’s history, modern life without the possibility of parole—that is, “death-by-incarceration”—did not exist. Rather, Michigan governors so routinely exercised their clemency power that nearly 60% of the people sentenced to life without parole for first-degree murder between 1900 and 1969 were eventually released by commutation, with each serving an average of fewer than 24 years.  

That all changed in the 1980s and 90s, and today Michigan’s life-without-parole scheme virtually forecloses any possibility of release for thousands of Michiganders, regardless of their potential or actual rehabilitation—an abandonment of the State’s constitutional commitment to the ideal of rehabilitation. MJC and SLRI urge the Michigan Supreme Court to uphold its constitutional duty and hold that mandatorily sentencing someone to life without parole for felony murder, absent evidence that they participated in or intended the death, is unconstitutionally cruel.