Politics

Bill Awaiting Pritzker’s Signature Would Clear Hurdle for People Challenging Sentences on Crimes Committed When Under 21

Omar Johnson has been in prison for his entire adult life. At 19, he shot and killed someone during a robbery. He then began his life sentence when he was 22 at Menard Correctional Center. In October, he’ll turn 50 inside of that same prison.

“I’m definitely not the person I was when I was 19 years old,” Omar Johnson said. “Life without parole is a sentence I was given; it’s an awful sentence, I believe, for anybody, because humans are capable of change.”

Now he’s trying to prove that to a judge. In 2016, he filed his second post-conviction petition, challenging his sentence, attaching articles with headlines like “The Teen Brain Still Under Construction” and “Neuroscience Is Changing the Debate Over What Role Age Should Play in the Courts.” Omar Johnson is waiting to move forward with his arguments regarding the effect his young age had on the development of his brain during the crime 30 years ago.

While he waits to hear if his petition will advance, a bill currently awaiting Gov. JB Pritzker’s signature might improve his chances. The bill, SB248, would remove a procedural hurdle for incarcerated people who were sentenced when under the age of 21 to challenge their convictions. 

A spokesperson for Pritzker would not say whether he’ll sign the bill into law. In a statement, the spokesperson said: “The Governor will carefully review everything that comes across his desk once received by the Illinois General Assembly and before signing.”

Every year, hundreds of people in Cook County alone file post-conviction petitions, a vital tool for those alleging injustice to get a new trial or be resentenced. This bill would expand on prior laws and court rulings that have increasingly required judges to take defendants’ youth into account.

“A lot of my friends are in the same situation as me,” Omar Johnson said. “It really gives them new life to be able to have the issue heard.” 

Following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2012, which found that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for young people are unconstitutional, a 2014 Illinois law requires judges to consider age, brain development and environmental circumstances when sentencing people under 18. The Illinois Supreme Court extended those protections in 2018 to people under 21. These decisions took into account developmental differences between juvenile and adult minds, such as a proclivity for risk and inability to assess consequences in youth.

“Our decisions rested not only on common sense—on what ‘any parent knows’—but on science and social science as well,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the majority opinion in 2012.

Incarcerated people in Illinois who were sentenced as youth prior to these legislative changes saw them as a potential opportunity to reduce their sentences. Instead, their pleas were often dismissed by judges. 

Those petitioners were often filing a successive post-conviction petition. In those petitions, a person must demonstrate “cause,” or why a claim wasn’t raised in their initial petition.

Those denials are largely due to a 2022 Illinois Supreme Court decision, People v. Moore, that ruled petitioners couldn’t demonstrate “cause” because they could have raised the issue of their youth in prior petitions.

“A lot of cases throughout the state were being hung up by (People v. Moore),” said James Jacobs, a Cook County public defender who handles post-conviction petitions.

SB248 eliminates the “cause” requirement for people sentenced under 21 to file a successive post-conviction petition claiming that their sentence violates the proportionate penalties clause — meaning young people shouldn’t be held as culpable as adults. 

“It’s going to increase the litigation in these specific cases about why people’s brains were less developed, why their conduct should not be punished as severely as it was and why the sentences, as applied to them, are unconstitutional,” Jacobs said. “Cases are going to be moving forward and they’re not going to be dismissed on a procedural basis.”

Jacobs estimated, conservatively, that there’s about 30 pending cases in the Cook County Public Defender’s Office that will be impacted if the bill is signed into law. But he expects there to be an influx of other petitions made with this argument, as people who were previously dismissed now refile under the new law.

The bill’s passage elated James Swansey, the policy director at Restore Justice. The criminal justice nonprofit had worked on the legislation for about three years, having previously been met with “timing issues,” Swansey said.

“I’m very excited that individuals that have not had the opportunity to use this will actually be able to use this now to file a petition and to get back in front of a judge and talk about who they are now and what things that they’ve done,” Swansey said.

State Sen. Adriane Johnson (D-Buffalo Grove), the chief sponsor of the bill in the Senate, said she wanted to make it easier for young people to have their sentences reviewed under evolving constitutional standards.

“This is giving them another opportunity for a second chance,” Adriane Johnson said.

During the bill’s vote in the House in May, it received some pushback from Republicans. State Rep. Dan Ugaste (R-Geneva) raised concerns that there are no eligibility limitations regarding the types of offenses committed by people aiming to file petitions under the bill.

In response, state Rep. Lilian Jiménez (D-Chicago) said every case would go before a judge and is subject to the standard post-conviction petition process.

“This is not a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Jiménez said. “It’s simply letting them file a post-conviction petition.”

The bill would not automatically grant a new hearing, as a petitioner still has to demonstrate “prejudice,” or how that claim affected their sentence. 

Those who have been able to file their initial post-conviction petition with this claim have had limited success, Jacobs said.

“There are cases where the state has agreed to resentencing [in] some very narrow circumstances, but limited success,” Jacobs said. “It’s been a very hard row to hoe with this, with people that are over 18.”

From his solitary confinement cell at Menard, Omar Johnson has written to the prison’s law library for months, asking for updates on the bill’s status.

“But I don’t have to ask that anymore,” he said. “I know it, and I think it’s great.”

Contact Blair Paddock: @blairpaddock.bsky.social‬ | [email protected]

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