Michigan remains one of the few spots on the planet where kids too young to legally drive or smoke cigarettes can receive a mandatory life sentence in prison — the maximum adult penalty.

That fact should shame every citizen of this great state, just as it has drawn fire from human rights groups nationwide. If Gov. Rick Snyder wants to reinvent Michigan from top to bottom, he can start by supporting the repeal of Michigan’s barbaric juvenile lifer law.

Michigan state prisons hold 350 juvenile lifers — inmates who were given mandatory life sentences for crimes committed when they were as young as 14. Many of them have already served decades in adult prisons, where they each cost taxpayers $35,000 a year.

Repealing the law, enacted in the 1980s, would not, in itself, release a single one of them; repeal would simply give each inmate sentenced under the law an opportunity to seek parole after serving a minimum sentence — probably 10 or 15 years, depending on how legislators wrote the new law. But the Michigan State Parole Board would still be able to deny any juvenile parole if parole board members believed the prisoner remained a risk to society.

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On August 29, 1976, around 1:40 am, a fire erupted at 1138 Spruce Street in Chester, Pennsylvania. The building, in a row of two-family homes just south of the Delaware Expressway, burned for two hours, killing two boys: 13-year-old Brian Harvey and his 6-year-old brother, Derrick.

The youngest of twelve kids, Trina was known as a slow child. She had a very low IQ and couldn’t read or write. Kids made fun of her for sucking her fingers. Her mother died when Trina was 9, and her father was a violent alcoholic capable of unthinkable cruelty. (Sworn affidavits describe, in addition to horrific abuse against his wife and kids, how he once beat the family dog to death with a hammer as Trina watched, then made his children clean up its remains.) From the time Trina was young, she was mostly cared for by her siblings: among them, Edith (or Edy), the eldest, who took over her mother’s responsibilities, and twin sisters Lynn and Linda, just a year older than Trina. In and out of homelessness, Trina and the twins slept in cars and abandoned buildings, washing their clothes in police stations and foraging for food wherever they could, including from trash cans.

When she was 11, Trina was sent by her grandmother to Allentown State Hospital for mental treatment; she was discharged at 13 against the advice of her doctor and stopped taking her medication.

Following the fire, prison officials requested she be given a psychiatric evaluation, after which she was deemed unfit for trial and hospitalized. A second evaluation yielded a diagnosis of schizophrenia. But a third assessment, just a few weeks later, deemed her competent to stand trial. Her lawyer did not challenge the decision. Nor did he challenge the prosecutor’s successful push to try Trina as an adult. (He would later be jailed and disbarred.) Trina was tried in March 1977. Trial transcripts have been lost, but it’s clear that she took the stand as the sole witness for the defense. Frances Newsome was the key witness for the prosecution, telling the jury Trina had set the fire as revenge on Sylvia Harvey for forbidding her sons to play with her.

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LANSING, MI — Charles Lewis Jr. is headed to juvenile detention, avoiding becoming Michigan’s youngest-ever juvenile lifer.

Ingham Circuit Judge George Economy on Friday handed down a delayed — or blended — sentence, meaning Lewis, 15, will be institutionalized at a juvenile detention center until age 21, when he will reappear before the court either to be freed or sentenced to life without parole.

A Florida appeals court Thursday tossed out an 80-year prison sentence for a Cantonment man convicted of committing two armed robberies in Cantonment as a juvenile, saying it violates a U.S Supreme Court ban on life sentences for juveniles in non-murder cases.

A three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal said the sentence for Antonio Demetrius Floyd, now 31,  is the “functional equivalent of a life sentence without parole.”

Floyd was 17 in 1998 when he committed two counts of armed robbery in Cantonment. He was initially sentenced to life in prison, but after the U.S. Supreme Court decision he was re-sentenced to 40 years on each count, according to Thursday’s ruling. The appeals court said Floyd would be 97 years old if he served the full sentence and ordered that the trial court revise the sentence.

“In this case, common sense dictates that (Floyd’s) 80-year sentence, which … is longer than his life expectancy, is the functional equivalent of a life without parole sentence and will not provide him with a meaningful or realistic opportunity to obtain release,” the court ruled.

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Adolfo Davis of Chicago was sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole for a crime committed when he was 14. Tomorrow, in a process little known by the public, Adolfo’s advocates will step before the Illinois Prisoner Review Board to make his case for clemency. This is the story of what brought him to that place.

At Stateville, a maximum security prison in Joliet, Illinois, I’m meeting again with Adolfo Davis, who surprises me a little. He’s more self-assured and optimistic than I remember.

DAVIS:  I see miracles still happen behind these walls. So, I’m grateful that I’m able to reach out to kids and show them they reality, before they end up where I’m at, so….

A lot has happened in Adolfo’s past four years. With plenty of outside help, he’s been able to put together a book of poetry, take an introductory college-level course, mentor a couple of at-risk kids by phone and, mount a plea for clemency.

A number of public figures have written letters to the governor in support of his bid for forgiveness and freedom, Judge Abner Mikva, State Representative Esther Golar and Cardinal Francis George, just to name a few.

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After 34 years in state prison for his role in the 1977 murder of a Lake Winola bartender, Eugene McGuire walked out of a Wyoming County courtroom a free man on Tuesday.

A tearful Mr. McGuire, 51, apologized “for my actions that allowed another to take a life of a human being – especially the community, friends and family who had to suffer the impact and pain of my actions.”

Eugene McGuire was 17 on the night of June 17, 1977, drinking and playing cards with his 19-year-old stepbrother, Sidney Coolbaugh, and 24-year-old cousin, Robert Lobman, when the three opted to go to a Lake Winola bar, the Marine Tavern Inn.

After a few drinks, Mr. Lobman informed the other two he planned to rob the bar, according to court documents. Out of fear that Isabelle Nagy, the 60-year-old bartender, might recognize Mr. McGuire and Mr. Coolbaugh as “local boys,” Mr. Lobman ushered them outside and told them to remain as lookouts.

Mr. Lobman then went back into the bar alone.

Seven years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that offenders younger than 18 couldn’t be sentenced to death, arguing that juveniles are generally less culpable than adults because they are less mature, more impulsive and more susceptible to peer pressure. By the same unassailable logic, the court should hold that sentencing young murderers to life without parole is cruel and unusual punishment.

Evan Miller and Kuntrell Jackson were both 14 when they committed their crimes. Miller and a 16-year-old friend beat a neighbor and set fire to his house in Alabama, leading to the neighbor’s death by smoke inhalation. Jackson and two friends tried to rob a video store in Arkansas, and a store clerk was shot to death. Even though he didn’t pull the trigger, Jackson was convicted of felony murder. Both young men were sentenced to life without parole, a sentence that can be imposed on 14-year-olds in 38 states, including California, and under federal law.

The court should use these cases to declare that no one younger than 18 should be sentenced to life in prison without parole. That would be consistent not only with its 2005 ruling outlawing the death penalty for juveniles but also with a 2010 decision that minors convicted of crimes other than murder couldn’t be sentenced to life without parole. In that ruling, JusticeAnthony M. Kennedy’s opinion noted that 18 is “the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood.”

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As the nation’s highest court prepares to hear oral arguments today on the constitutionality of sending juvenile killers to life in prison with no chance for parole, an unlikely trio of Bostonians is hopeful the justices move quickly to abolish the sentence.

“I would give my life for Hassan and he would do the same for me,” said retired Massachusetts Juvenile Court Judge Mark E. Lawton, speaking about a teenage killer he sentenced more than 20 years ago – but has now become Lawton’s close friend.

“If he were the devil incarnate I wouldn’t have anything to do with him, but he is a great tool for goodness,” Lawton said last week, as he prepared to introduce Hassan Smith, now 40, to his juvenile law class at New England School of Law in Boston.

Smith, now a father of three who mentors troubled inner-city youth, believes firmly teenagers – like the one he once was – deserve a chance at redemption no matter how serious their mistakes.

It is that very question the high court is being asked to rule on in the appeals of two-14-year-old killers. Like Smith, who was 16 when he shot Jeffrey Booker in Boston, both inmates are black.

One of those defendants, Evan Miller, from Alabama, was 14 in 2003 when he and an older boy fatally beat a drunken neighbor to death in a trailer park, lit the victim’s home on fire and fled.

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The Supreme Court in 2005 justly banned the death penalty for minors convicted of murder. In 2010, it banned life without parole for youths convicted of crimes other than murder. In two cases argued before the court on Tuesday, the justices should take the next step and ban life without parole for youths convicted of murder.

In an Alabama case, Evan Miller, a 14-year-old, and a friend stole a collection of baseball cards and $300 from a neighbor. They attacked the man with a baseball bat, and killed him when they set fire to his home. In an Arkansas case, Kuntrell Jackson, also 14, tried to rob a video store with two friends. When the clerk said she was going to call the police, one of the other youths shot and killed her with a shotgun. Both Mr. Miller and Mr. Jackson received mandatory sentences of life without parole for murder.

Alabama and Arkansas asked the court to allow them to continue to impose a sentence of life without parole for a juvenile who has committed murder. But the Supreme Court has found that there are critical differences between adolescents and adults in maturity and susceptibility to peer pressure and other forces. Relying on that insight in its 2005 and 2010 cases, the court concluded both times “it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult.” It would be as misguided to equate young adolescents with adults in cases of murder.

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As we each prepared to enter the visitation room of Minnesota’s Stillwater state prison for men in 2005, one from the visitor’s side, one from the inmate’s side, we were both nervous, and found ourselves full of caution. For each of us, the biggest question was: Is forgiveness possible between the mother of a murdered youth and the teenager who took his life?

That meeting was the beginning of a unique partnership. We have cried together, healed together, talked and listened together, and found that simple conversations can change lives. Together, we speak to churches, schools, prisons and conferences. Our message is that violence can be prevented and that it is possible to live with forgiveness, no matter what has happened to you.

We usually avoid the specific details of that night in February 1993, when Laramiun Byrd lost his life. It’s too painful for any mother to relive. A 16-year-old killed a 20-year-old at a party, and Mary lost her only child. To be a grieving parent is the worst human pain, and we are both aware that healing and moving forward will never completely erase that hurt.

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