Latest news with #JoseBurgos
CBS News
08-05-2025
- CBS News
Nearly 600 people sentenced to life in Michigan could be up for resentencing
After a landmark ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court, nearly 600 people convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole as juveniles could be up for resentencing. With that comes concerns of potential overload and strain on prosecutors' offices across the state. "Yes, there will be court resources spent on resentencing these individuals, but the savings and the potential to avoid needless, inhumane incarceration is massive," said Maya Menlo, assistant youth defender with the Michigan State Appellate Defender Office (SADO). In a 5-2 ruling, the Michigan Supreme Court found that people who committed murder between the ages of 19 and 20 should be resentenced, rather than serve life in prison without parole. Out of the 600 people convicted, 285 are in Wayne County. The state's high court made a similar decision for 18-year-olds. "We need to zoom out and look at the system as a whole, not just the court system, but also the Michigan Department of Corrections," said Menlo. The ruling, which called the original law a "violation" of Michigan's constitutional prohibition on cruel or unusual punishment, regardless of the date of the offense, says those cases should be reexamined because the defendants' brains weren't fully developed at the time. Jose Burgos knows the consequences of that firsthand after he was convicted and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole when he was 16. "As a juvenile lifer, as a child who went to prison, was giving a life without parole sentence, I knew that the only way we were going to change that is that somebody who experienced that was going to have to come out here and explain to the people, explain to the state of Michigan, explain to this country, how horrible it is to sentence children to life without parole," said Burgos. After serving 27 years, Burgos' sentence was reduced, and he was released in 2018. Menlo says the April decision doesn't minimize the crimes committed – or the victims impacted – but instead ensures defendants are given fair sentences. "Victims are not a monolith, and it is a disservice to victims to say that all of them oppose resentencing and all of them want life without the possibility of parole because we know that is simply not true," said Menlo. SADO found that the oldest prisoner up for resentencing in Wayne County is 80 years old, and all those eligible have served a combined total of close to 8,000 years in prison. One concern was the additional strain on county offices in terms of resources and staffing, so CBS News Detroit reached out to Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, who issued the following statement: "The MSC gave us six months to review over 400 Wayne County cases. Justice cannot be fair with this timeline. We intend to be thoughtful in evaluating these cases. We must review trial transcripts, MDOC records, medical and psychological records of each of the defendants, review the documents from each of the defense lawyers and find and contact each and every one of the affected families to inform them of this decision. "As has been the case with the MSC for years now, they do not seem to care about the plight of victims and the survivor families. These are all First-Degree Murder cases where these defendants were lawfully convicted. And we intend to be thoughtful and fair to each of these defendants. The WCPO is going to need a substantial amount of extra resources to be able to follow the dictates of the Court and do the right thing. And the timeline is untenable." Menlo says prosecutors do have a period of around six months to review all the cases and decide whether they want to seek life without parole for those who are eligible for resentencing.
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Orion Spanish teacher affected by loss of Temporary Protected Status
An order from Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem ends protections from deportation for almost 350,000 Venezuelans. About 350,000 Venezuelans live in the U.S. with Temporary Protected Status that is set to expire in April. That's roughly half the nearly 600,000 people who have the protection; the remaining protections are set to expire at the end of September. The termination notice is being published on Wednesday, February 5 and will go into effect 60 days later. Jose Burgos left Venezuela in 2016 and now teaches high school Spanish in Orion. He's been in the U.S. for over three years; first as a student completing his master's degree, then as a teacher. He's one of those affected by Noem's order. He spoke with Our Quad Cities News via Zoom to discuss the decision and how it impacts him. 'It's widely known through reports of several international agencies that the Venezuelan regime is violating human rights,' he said. 'Venezuela has so many horrible statistics. It has the highest incarceration rate of political prisoners. It has 17 torture centers. The U.S. created a category for Venezuelans to expedite their ability to be in the US and be safe from harm, and that category is called TPS, Temporary Protected Status. That category was created in 2021 and there are other handful of countries who enjoy this protection benefit, Cuba, Ukraine, Afghanistan and if I remember correctly, Syria, and now recently Venezuelan.' 'What has happened earlier this week is that Homeland Security has canceled this benefit for Venezuelans, which would leave around 600,000 Venezuelans in a limbo where their only option, for many of them, is to be deported, to leave the US in some abrupt and difficult way.' Complicating thing is the fact that many of them lost valuable identification when they left. 'Some of these Venezuelans don't even have a passport because they were stripped from everything when they left Venezuela. The US does not have diplomatic relationships with Venezuela, so Venezuelans can't even apply for a passport so that they can leave the country. Options are very limited for Venezuelans right now. 'These Venezuelans who obtained the Temporary Protected Status, they are about 600,000 legal immigrants, meaning that they went through a lengthy process of proving that they don't have any criminal records and proving that their circumstances in their countries are really, really bad. It's pretty dramatic and sad and surreal for so many people.' Burgos' status expires in April, and he says his next steps are unclear. 'I don't know what to do. That's it. I don't know what to do. I will have to analyze what my options are in order to guarantee my safety. I don't even know how to put this into words. I am really afraid of going back to Venezuela because I was part of those university students, those college students who protested in 2012-2014, and also because while I was working in Honduras, I worked side by side with several Venezuelan ambassadors who were just doing humanitarian work for Venezuelans. But these ambassadors were part of the opposition. So, my name is registered in the database of the Venezuelan regime as the opposition. So that's not an option unless I want to be jail.' The only family Burgos has left in Venezuela are two uncles. He has family living in Europe and Central and South America. He says he can't go back to Venezuela. He's trying to keep the details of his status away from his students. 'I try to be careful about mixing my professional life with my Venezuelan life, my personal life. It's been really complicated, and I try to show up for my students in a way that they feel safe, they feel that they can rely on me. These are things that I don't mention unless I have a one-on-one conversation with one student who is really curious, and they want to know more about me. They know very little about my life as a Venezuela so it's just part of trying to have a healthy classroom environment where they feel that they can rely on me and that I'll be there for them.' Burgos says things haven't always been this way in Venezuela. 'I have seen the consequence of polarization firsthand in my country. My country used to be one of the wealthiest economies in the world. We had great everything, and we also had a big wave of dreamers and immigrants who came to Venezuela from all over the world, enjoying the beautiful weather and the wealth of the country and the friendliness of the people and the hospitality. I saw in a few years how division and polarization made our society collapse. What I am really sad about is how people's defense mechanisms against polarization are just being hacked, and they don't realize how fighting each other just makes life more complicated. Eventually it destroys communities, and it destroys entire societies. I am really concerned about how different political leaders, they pitch people against each other, and people forget that we're all human beings. We're all here to make this country better and we are here to make society better.' 'We all want the same. We all want prosperity, growth, community, friendship. So, to me, it's just really sad to see how some people are pitching different demographics against each other, and they don't realize that they're being victims of this.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
