GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A man who went to prison for a Grand Rapids murder committed when he was 15 will not see his life sentence shortened, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled.
Now 41, Willie Terrell Clemons has tried unsuccessfully several times to get his life sentence shortened for the 1995 murder. He shot 20-year-old Jason Stanfield outside Fulton Heights Foods as horrified patrons looked on.
Even a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down mandatory life sentences for juveniles didn’t provide relief. Justices said life sentences are still an option, but only under the rarest of circumstances.
A Kent County judge in 2018 said the premeditated violence carried out by Clemons, a history of violence and a dismal prison record, justified life in prison.
A second Kent County judge last year agreed, denying a request by Clemons to be resentenced.
In a nine-page decision this week, the appeals court said Clemons was sentenced properly.
Clemons sought a shorter sentence based on his age at the time of the crime, his limited intellectual functioning as well as his troubled family and home environment.
In upholding the life sentence, justices noted that Clemons, between 1996 and 2018, accumulated numerous misconduct offenses in prison, including 65 assault incidents and 216 sexual misconducts.
On the evening of the Oct. 16, 1995 murder, Clemons confronted Stanfield in the parking lot of Fulton Heights Foods on East Fulton Street near Wilcox Park. Clemons shot Stanfield after Stanfield asked Clemons to leave him alone.
Clemons had committed other armed robberies in the previous 3½ weeks, court records show.
While in prison, he also threatened to kill a corrections officer “as he had killed Stanfield,’’ court records show.
“We conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in resentencing defendant to life imprisonment without parole,’’ justices wrote.
Clemons is serving his life sentence at a state prison in southeast Michigan.
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