In 1999, the Michigan Supreme Court added an arrow to its criminal justice quiver that has dumbfounded prisoners and emboldened prosecutors and judges alike. Glover v. Michigan Parole Board recognized the concept of "no liberty interest". That means a prisoner serving an indeterminate sentence - like "life" (parolable or mandatory) - has "no reasonable expectation of liberty" until he has served out his entire life in prison. Such a ruling ensures that only by the Michigan Parole Board's beneficence does such a prisoner get so much as a whiff of freedom.
It was U.S. Magistrate Judge Ray Kent who broke the news to me on February 10, 2025, while denying my 1983 pro se complaint against the Michigan Department of Corrections. I was dumbfounded and filled with a sense of betrayal. I could not believe I have "no liberty interest," no matter what that means. I was born in Woodland Park, MI, in 1952, and have lived my entire life in this state. No one, I thought, could change my "liberty interest" or ignore my due process rights. Judge Ray Kent disagreed.
There is something clillingly ironclad about the notion: "no liberty interest." It allows what they call "The Michigan System" to cut away the cornerstone of American democracy - the 14th Amendment - and say to lifers, "It doesn't apply to you."
Liberty, for all of its inherent strength, is a nuanced and delicate thing, dependent too much upon the grace of our fellow Americans. Realizing that benevolent design can be a tricky prospect in this country. It is Americans' historic willingness to confine and otherwise degrade their fellow Americans - African-American slaves on the plantation, Native Americans on reservations, 120,000 Japanese-Americans in internment camps - that has cast a pall over this "Land of the Free."
America has unilaterally decided the value of these people's "liberty interest". That value has always been less than the value of "real Americans", and America has entered it thus in its ledger. Is it any wonder that America, with a measly 4% of the world's population today, commands 24% of the world's prisoners and 40% of its lifers?
In 2025, mass incarceration of blacks, Hispanics, and poor whites has replaced the plantation, and the reservation. many of these people cannot afford advanced legal representation, (which is the only kind these courts respect). This is a legal system that authorizes the legislature to strip rights and freedoms from prisoners at the stroke of a pen; at the sound of voices that have become mere echoes of voices centuries old - those steeped in denying the dark-skinned, and the poor. Then, they draw up moral codes to glorify their work. This nascent practice of employing "no liberty interest" is just another sojourn into psychological warfare against an ill-equipped collection of American citizenry.
What a piece of work this Michigan Supreme Court: Took the concept of liberty, claimed it, clipped its wings, and now fancies that liberty has become a discerning entity, one that can be lifted above "those wretched lifer wraiths."
After 400 years on this North American continent, America is right back where it started. Telling a prisoner has has "no liberty interest", and no due process right to pursue it, is the modern-day equivalent of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of the U. S. Supreme Court, telling fugitive slave, Dred Scott, in 1857, that "a black man has no rights a white man was bound to respect.
Fortunately for America, Abe Lincoln was around to upend Judge Taney's "sub-citizen" doctrine. At some point, another Amnerican must stand up; perhaps someone in Michigan - a judge, a prosecutor, a human being - who will look into this abyss, and declare: "I can no longer, in good conscience, take part in this travesty."
Patrick Henry didn't do it. In 1775, that great patriot acknowledged that slaver "is repugnant... inconsistent with the Bible, and destructive of liberty." He kept slaves, nontheless, because of "the inconvenience of living without them."
Thomas Jefferson couldn't do it, either. He knew slavery was wrong. He stated: "We have a wolf by the ears. We cannot hold on forever, but we can never let it go."
How does Michigan right itself, and let go of the "wolf's ears?" The very volume of Michigan prisoners assures thousands of well-paying jobs throughout the state. And how inconvenient it would be for politicians, whose endless queshing of these chained men's and women's spirits in the name of "tough-on-crime" politices, to suddenty have to come up with another vapid slogan to fuel their small-minded dreams of heroism.
These politicians are built to mimic Jefferson, who offered this gem of an answer to the question of slavery: "They are to be removed beyond the reach of mixture." He spoke these words at the same time he was fathering children by his slave, Sally Hemmings.
When it comes to liberty in America, it is a game of subtraction. Michigan has convinced itself that, like Taney in 1857, all it takes is a court order to hold the rights and liberty of the disenfranchised at bay. Michigan has foolishly taken a divine force - liberty - and corrupted it, similar to when America reduced black men to three-fifths of a person, then congratulated itself on its brilliant deduction.
