Legislature Passes 650 Reform

On July 2, 1998, the Michigan Senate passed SB281 and HB 4065, the much fought over bills to reform Michigan's controversial "650 lifer law." (An opportunity to download the text of the bill and legislative analysis in Adobe PDF format appears at the bottom of the page). Under the prior bill, persons convicted of crimes involving more than 650 grams of cocaine or heroin were required to be sentennced to prison without the possibility of parole. A 1993, Michigan Supreme Court decision removed persons convicted of simply possessing more than 650 grams of cocaine from the ambit of this law and permitted these individuals to be subject to lifer law paroles in ten or fifteen years, depending on the date of the commission of their offense. The Michigan Supreme Court, however, refused to extend this ruling to any other 650 drug laws.

After years of public pressure, the Michigan Legislature finally amended this law on July 2, 1998 to provide some relief. If signed by the Governor, this law will be provide for the following:

• Making all individuals currently serving sentence under the 650 law eligible for parole after 20 calendar years. Persons convicted of violating the law after October 1, 1988 face peanlities of "life or any term of years, not less than 20;"
  
• Permitting two and one-half year additional sentence reductions for (a) first time offenders; (b) individuals who have cooperated. Cooperation is to be determined by the trial judge or his/her successor. Individuals who genuinely know nothing are also entitled to this certification. A person can receive downward departures for both factors for a total of five years.

Preliminary opinions seem to indicate that the trial judge is initially out of the loop except for cooperation. Cooperation certifications must come from the trial judge. It appears after the Parole Board initially reviews the case and certifies interest to the trial judge, the trial judge can still veto the parole under the lifer law veto provisions.

Before a parole can be granted under this this act to pre-October 1, 1998 cases, the board is required to consider all of the following: (a) whether the violation was part of a continues series of violations under the public health code; (b) whether the violation was committed by the individual in concert with five or more other individuals; (c) whether the individual was a principal administrator, organizer, leader of an entity organized to violate Michigan's drug law and whether the charged crime was committed in furtherance of that act; and, (d) whether the crime was committed in a drug-fee school zone. Persons released under this act must spend the first 30 days of their parole in a community corrections center or community residential home.

The battle has been won, but the war is not over. Prosecutors have vowed to challenge the constitutionality of this act. While they have not announced their exact strategy, the most likely challenge will be to argue that the retroactive provisions of the law violate the governor's commutation powers. An excellent memorandum defending the constitutionality of the statute now appears in the document libary at the bottom of this page. Additionally, the law does not address problems associated with mandatory consecutive sentences.

Important Documents

The following are important documents relative to this soon to be new law. As the documents become available, they will be posted here in PDF, RTF, and HTML. PDF is the format which bests preserves the formatting of the original document and you have Adobe Acrobat(c) Reader, this is the recommended format. (The program is free and a link to it follows). RTF is the best format to open the documents in your wordprocessor. HTML is the language of the web and permits you to view the document in your web browser. Icons which are grayed are document formats which are not yet implemented.

PDF	RTF	HTML	Description
			Text of Senate Bill No. 281.
			Text of House 4065
			Legislative Analysis to SB 281. This analysis was prepared in October of 1997. Unfortunately, the analysis is dated, but appears to be the latest. The RTF versions version is dirty at the moment and should only be used by persons not having access to Acrobat Reader. The scans will be cleaned up in next few days and an HTML version will be created from the cleaned up version.
			MDOC's Director's Office Memorandum regarding 650 lifer hearings
			Memorandum (prepared by Attorneys Martin Reisig, Kenneth Mogil, and Elizabeth Jacobs regarding constitutionality of retroactive statutes reducing penalties.
			Parole Reminder form. This form is used to trigger a parole interview when you believe that your client is eligible for an interview and is not receiving it. When the bill is signed it to law, you can use it to trigger an interview.
			MDOC Policy Directive Regarding parole decisionmaking.
			Download Adobe Acrobat Reader from the Adobe web site. Acrobat allows you to view documents in their original format on your computer and print out documents of photocopy quality from a standard laser printer. This program is industry standard and is currently being utilized by the Michigan Legislature and the Federal Judiciary for their web postings.
			Link to Legislative Status Table for SB 281
			Link to Legislative Status Table for HB 4065

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